


Don't sound like no sonnet

by RedHorse



Series: Sonnet verse [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, American AU, Crime, Dirty Talk, Frottage, M/M, Motorcycle Gangs, Public Sex, ex-con!Sirius, harry is 18, non-magic au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-03-08 06:25:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18888994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHorse/pseuds/RedHorse
Summary: Harry has a high school diploma and no clear plan for the future. Sirius has a checkered past and a motorcycle. They meet on the first day of a very eventful summer.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [This_is_your_Heichou_speaking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/This_is_your_Heichou_speaking/pseuds/This_is_your_Heichou_speaking) in the [SirryFest](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SirryFest) collection. 



> Thank you to heichou for the prompt, The Verve for the title and cybrid for the beta!

1990

When Harry was ten, Bill Weasley came home to visit on a motorcycle. Mrs. Weasley, after a lot of shouting and fretting, let him take Ron for a ride around the block.

Harry watched the motorcycle take the corner, the rear tire stuttering, and heard Ron’s delighted squeal. He turned to Mrs. Weasley, who was practically wringing her hands as she watched them go out of sight down the adjacent street. The motorcycle was sleek and modern-looking, with a quiet engine, and Bill had to lean far forward to reach the handlebars. 

“Can I go next, Mrs. Weasley? _Please_.” Harry begged.

Mrs. Weasley frowned down at him. “Not without your parents saying it’s okay, Harry.” 

His heart leapt. “Can I go call them?”

“No, no, honey. They’ll be back this afternoon and you can ask then. Bill isn’t going anywhere til tomorrow.”

Harry was anxious all the rest of the day, and when his parents came in, he was out the door of the Burrow and into the yard before they could even park.

“Mom! Dad! Bill has a motorbike!” 

“That’s nice, Harry,” said Dad, while Mom grimaced.

“He’ll take me for a ride if you say it’s okay!” 

Dad hesitated, but before he could say anything Mom had said, “ _Absolutely not_.”

Harry knew better than to argue with _that_ tone. But he did let all his heartbreak shine in his eyes as he looked up at her. She bit her lip, but didn’t budge. “I’m sorry, Harry, but _no_.”

Then she turned to get Annie out of her carseat.

Dad patted Harry consolingly on the head. “They’re dangerous, kiddo.” 

In demonstration, Bill totaled the bike later that night and though he was fine, he didn’t get another one. Still, Harry never forgot the romance of the motorcycle. It was ordinary for boys to love them, but even as he grew up, he’d look up expectantly when he heard the telltale whine of a bike’s engine. It was only out of respect for his Mum he never rode one—well, that and the chance never presented itself again.

Until it did.

* * *

1998

Graduation was bittersweet for Harry. He was excited to spend the night out with his friends, and even had his parents’ indirect permission to stay out late (“Just come in the basement door and crash in the guest room,” his dad had murmured while his mom pretended not to hear.) 

But he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to come to an end, and he wasn’t sure what was going to take its place.

He kept his feelings under control pretty well until several hours after the ceremony, when he and his friends were in Dean’s parents’ basement, toasting one another’s futures. When it was Harry’s turn to receive well-wishes, Dean squinted at him over the rim of his bottle.

“And Harry! What’s Harry doing?”

“Harry is figuring things out,” Ron offered.

“It’s very responsible,” Hermione added. “He shouldn’t invest in a degree program until he’s identified a career path.”

Harry smiled gratefully at her, but it was still hard to reconcile his serious-minded friend with the girl sitting cross-legged on the kitchenette counter, holding an empty shot glass. Since her last exam, Hermione had embraced the philosophy of “work hard, play hard” that she’d championed all through their school years to an impressive new degree.

“Any ideas, though?” 

Harry shrugged. “Nah.”

Dean blinked. “But you’re not just staying at the garage?” 

Harry shrugged again and looked down. He wasn’t drunk at all, really; the contents of his cup were warm, since he’d been nursing them over an hour. He loved seeing all his friends’ excitement, and he was beyond grateful to never have to file into a high school classroom again. He’d never learned to do more than tolerate school and wouldn’t miss it. The idea of going into college courses, which would be harder and would lack the benefit of being with his friends, sounded like torture.

“Yeah, for now,” Harry said.

“It’s very…” began Hermione.

“Responsible, yeah, they get it,” Ron whisper-shouted at Hermione.

If Harry wasn’t particularly drunk, Ron was making up for his shortcomings. He slung an arm around Harry and Harry swiftly caught the half-empty bottle dangling from his hand and sloshing dangerously.

“Harry coulda gone to one of those baseball schools,” Ron shouted, apparently intent on reminding everyone in a three-block radius that Harry had been scouted for college programs.

Harry shot a quick, embarrassed glance at Dean, who had been hopeful but _hadn’t_ gotten any offers, but Dean seemed amused rather than offended. In the end, he was probably glad he could just focus on Trigonometry or Calculus or whatever advanced math classes people who were into that kind of thing went for.

Harry managed to escape to the outdoors, where Seamus waved at him, a cigarette between two fingers. Harry smiled and leaned against the wall, carefully upwind. 

“You’ll stay at Frank’s, right?” 

Harry nodded. Seamus didn’t seem surprised. He was usually laid back, but right now he could see Seamus was on edge. Particularly when he tossed his spent cigarette to the concrete patio and ground it out with a toe, then immediately lit another. 

“Dean says you might look for a job in Overbrook, so you’ll be close to his school,” Harry mentioned conversationally, but he knew he’d said the wrong thing when Seamus laughed bitterly, then took a long pull of his cigarette before answering.

“He’ll stop saying that tomorrow when we break up,” he said, shrugging and looking out over the shadowed, extensively landscaped backyard. 

“What?” Harry couldn’t hide his shock. The effortlessly cool Seamus had been shadowed by a lovesick Dean for as long as anyone had been interested in that kind of thing. Since middle school. “Why would you break up?” 

“It’s only a matter of time, Harry. You think he’ll go off to school and stay with some townie like me?”

“You’re not a townie,” Harry scoffed. 

“Nah, not today. That starts tomorrow, when I’m all graduated and still hanging around.” 

“But you could go to Overbrook—” 

“I’m not doing that. I’m not going to wait around to get my heart broken.” 

Harry’s brow furrowed. “Oh.” 

They stood in silence while Seamus finished his cigarette. “I’ll see you around, then,” he said, almost lightly. “Since you’ll be at Frank’s. I’m starting full time at the store Monday, but it closes early. Maybe we can hang out.” 

“Yeah,” Harry said, thoughts still reeling. Seamus studied him a moment then smiled, just a quirk of his lips.

“You’ll be alright, Potter,” he said. “Your parents’ll send you along after a while whether you want them to or not.”

Harry wondered what that was supposed to mean, but didn’t ask. Just fixed Seamus’ shoulders with a blank stare while he went back in the house, leaving Harry alone with the lingering smell of smoke. He had always thought cigarettes were foul, so he grimaced and walked out into the grass where the air felt cleaner and easier to breathe.

He hadn’t intended to keep walking, but before he knew it he was all the way across the carefully mowed grass, stepping over a bed of mulched hostas and striding down the dark sidewalk.

Harry knew sometimes people broke up when they went away, or grew apart. That could happen whether or not they all followed a similar course. Hermione’s college was all the way in California, half a continent away, and though Ron’s was only two hours’ drive, they’d all be doing their own things, meeting their own group of peers, handling their own concerns, in a way that would be unlike their school years together. All their worlds were getting a little bigger, and that meant they’d all be less of a part of each other’s.

He _knew_ that, but there was something about the look on Seamus’ face, and his resignation to he and Dean being over, that gave all the things Harry had already known new, painful resonance.

He was six blocks from Dean’s when he heard a motorcycle engine, noisy, though still far off, and the slightest bit choked. Then it sputtered and cut. Curious, Harry kept walking, and after a few blocks he could hear a lowered voice say, “Fuck,” just as he saw a man standing alongside a gleaming black motorcycle supported by its kickstand. Harry couldn’t make out a lot in the darkness; at this point between the street lights it was hard to see much more than shapes. But the man was tall and his silhouette was attractive in close-fitting black jeans, a leather jacket and hair tied up in a messy half-bun.

“Having trouble?” Harry called.

The guy stiffened as he turned, his hand straying toward his hip. Harry had never seen anyone reach for a gun except in movies, but some instinct had him pausing, holding his hands slightly out to his sides. Then his breath caught at the sight of the man’s face. He _looked_ like someone out of a movie, too. Even in the darkness, his features were clearly drawn in a fair-skinned face, his eyes some sort of dark blue on the edge of grey, narrowed in a dangerous way that made Harry’s pulse leap.

Then he seemed to take Harry in and relaxed, the crease between his eyebrows disappearing, his hand drifting away from whatever he had in his waistband.

“I didn’t mean to bother you, but I think I heard your engine die,” Harry said apologetically, taking a half-step backward. But where there had been menace a moment before, there was now only curious openness on the stranger’s face.

“Just a good Samaritan, huh?” he flashed a smile, his teeth even and white, a dimple appearing briefly in the stubble of his left cheek. Harry’s face was hot, but he was sure it was too dark for to tell.

“Yeah,” Harry said, trying to match his tone, but just sounding breathy. He cleared his throat. “I work in a garage, actually. And I thought it sounded like…” he took in the motorcycle and blinked. “Fuck, is that a Black Shadow?” 

The guy looked surprised, then smug. He stroked the black leather seat. “Yeah. Good eye, kid. Your place work on a lot of bikes?” 

“No,” Harry said, staring at the sleek lines, the telltale black finish on the engine. “I never thought I’d see one of these in person.”

“Well, check it out,” the guy said with a laugh, stepping back and folding his arms. Harry shot him a quick look of disbelief, but came forward before he could change his mind, running his fingertips over the glossy front panel and peering at the headlight. 

“Lots of original parts on it, too,” he said admiringly.

“Too many, I guess. It needs a reno. Keeps overheating. Thought I could get away with a short, slow ride tonight, but I guess not.” 

Harry had the sense of being studied, and glanced up at the man, but they’d traded places and now the faint light from up the street was behind the stranger, and it was Harry who was in its weak spotlight. Whatever he noticed about Harry had him going suddenly, completely still.

Harry hastily looked away. Maybe he’d seemed older in the darkness. Harry got that sometimes; Ron told him he had a “mature vibe and a baby face,” often while pinching his cheeks.

“Well, I can see why you’d rather keep it intact,” Harry said lamely, and moved away. “How long does it need to cool down?” 

“Probably good to go by now. I just came off the highway and it’s all easy driving from here.” The tension Harry thought he had observed a moment ago must have been his imagination. The guy’s voice was as deep and even as it had been before. 

Harry nodded. “Cool. Well, see ya.” He started to turn toward the sidewalk.

“Since you’re such an enthusiast,” said the stranger, his voice an octave lower, “maybe you ought to come along with me. Have a ride.”

Harry tried not to gape. “What?” 

“You heard me.” He slid a leg over the seat and then scooted forward an inch, tilting his head to indicate Harry should climb on behind. When Harry still hesitated, he said soberly, “If you’re not sure about getting on a motorcycle with a guy whose name you don’t know, it’s Sirius, by the way.” 

Harry laughed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m Harry.” He was already drifting closer, which made the stranger—Sirius—smile before ducking his head so a loose bit of wind-tangled hair brushed his cheek. 

“Up to you,” he said, and leaned over to kick down on the start. Harry sucked in a deep breath as the engine roared, dangerously loud at close range, and his mind was made up. He might have dragged his feet, mortified and fascinated by the thought of fitting himself behind Sirius’ leather-clad back and putting his arms around his waist. But a door opened and someone shouted about the noise of the engine on the otherwise quiet street, and Harry found himself practically running the two steps, sliding into place just as Sirius hit the gas. Inertia threw them snugly together and he didn’t have a chance to feel awkward.

The seat vibrated with the force of the engine, the tires jerked. It was just as terrifying as his mother had given him cause to believe it would be, and just as exhilarating as he’d assumed when he was ten.

The exhilaration factor had to have something to do with the fact he was behind the sexiest person he’d ever seen in real life, the scent of leather, aftershave and the night air in his nose, zigzagging amongst parked cars down the sleepy narrow streets like Sirius was _trying_ to wake up anyone who had the gall to be in bed before eleven. Harry wore short-sleeves; it was early summer, after all. So he could feel the smooth warmth of the jacket all down his arms. 

They went through all the streets that were familiar to Harry and breezed out onto roads he didn’t know, then a twisting blacktop road without pavement markings that Harry knew only by reputation, and then into a sparse gravel lot where they kicked up as much dirt as rock as Sirius angled into a spot alongside the exterior wall of a bar Harry knew his father would have forbidden him to enter. But when Sirius hopped off the bike and jerked his head again for Harry to follow, one brow arched, like a dare, Harry had to go in. And more than that, he _wanted_ to.

In the bar, Harry was immediately hit with the smell of old cigarettes, spilled drinks and greasy food. Someone was eating bacon and eggs at the bar next to two women doing shots, and the air was thick with smoke, old and new. His eyes watered and he reached under his glasses to rub them.

“Okay, kid?” Sirius asked, touching Harry’s elbow. Somehow the soft, deliberate touch made Harry’s stomach flip like a first touch, even though he’d just spent the last ten minutes plastered against Sirius’ back.

“Yeah,” Harry said, pulling his hand away from his face and looking Sirius in the eye. The bar was dim but there was still more light here than there had been on the street or in the parking lot, and he could tell Sirius was a little older than he’d thought at first. There were a few fine lines at the corners of his eyes and on either side of his smile. 

Sirius said curled his fingers around Harry’s elbow to tow him gently along through the distracted crowd.

The wind had probably done something terrible to Harry’s hair, but Sirius’ only looked artfully tangled, falling just to his shoulders and with the slightest bit of curl.

“Sirius!” called someone from across the room, but Harry couldn’t see anything but Sirius’ shoulders and the heads of the people moving by them in either direction, not until they had made their way to a table where Sirius was greeted again by three men and a woman wearing leather jackets with the same coiled-snake symbol on their patches that Harry noticed on Sirius’.

“And he brought a guest,” noted one of the men, a lean, bearded one. The woman sat on his knee; her jacket was sleeveless and zipped tightly to her throat, but her legs, crossed at the thigh and slung over the man’s lap, were bare to mid-thigh and covered in tattoos in shades of violet.

The other two didn’t comment, but Harry felt them looking at him, unabashed. 

“A special guest,” said the grey-haired one, and there was a hard look in his beady blue eyes that made Harry avert his eyes and wonder if he was going to regret coming in here.

“I’m not staying long,” Sirius said, reaching into his jacket and pulling out an envelope wrapped in plastic, which he dropped on the middle of the table. The third man, who hadn’t spoken yet and who had a sleek black ponytail, swore and snatched the parcel off the table almost as soon as it hit the surface.

“Fuck, man,” he said, shooting Sirius a look. Sirius looked back at him with an absent smile.

Then they all looked uncertainly at Harry, and Sirius tugged him closer. “Don’t worry about Harry, here. He’s a mechanic and he recognized my bike. No one with that kind of soul would go spreading rumors about a new friend.”

Harry let his spinning thoughts coalesce. All kinds of people rode motorcycles and wore leather. All kinds of people came to questionable bars for a laugh. All kinds of people carried guns. But these weren’t all kinds of people. Harry was glad he didn’t know what was in the envelope.

“Want a drink, Harry?” Sirius asked, turning toward him, leaning against the table in the process, so he had a backdrop of unsmiling faces that Harry couldn’t quite stop himself from seeing. He made himself look only at Sirius instead, which was kind of a dizzying experience, this close and with his face clear even in the smoky light. His eyes, bright and open, accentuated by the thick black eyebrows—the smallest silver scar passing through the one on the right—his sculpted cheeks and jaw, that half-smile and single dimple. With more light, Harry could see his lips were dark pink, the lower one surprisingly full.

“I’m not . . . ” Harry started to say, and then hastily adjusted his gaze, which had been resting on Sirius’ mouth, back to Sirius’ eyes. “I’m eighteen,” he said, a little defensively. 

Sirius smiled again, reached out and bumped his knuckles softly against Harry’s cheek and laughed. “Legal for the important stuff then.” He winked when Harry’s jaw dropped, then took a cigarette out of his pocket and waved it back and forth. Harry closed his mouth.

“I don’t smoke.” Harry couldn’t keep the distaste from his voice. Sirius looked surprised for a moment, then let out a quick, surprisingly loud laugh. He put the cigarette back and then looked thoughtfully at the door.

“Should I take you back, then? I don’t want you to feel kidnapped.”

Harry shook his head mutely. Sirius squinted at him, which made a wrinkle appear in his nose. “One beer then? I’m the one who’s driving,” he said playfully. Harry nodded.

Sirius grinned and shoved him gently toward the bar. Harry smiled back nervously then led the way, conscious of Sirius behind him in a way that made his shoulders hunch til he felt Sirius’ knuckles against the small of his back, a light touch that felt twice as electric as the same guiding pressure on his elbow from before.

When they got to the bar, a few people had cleared out, so Harry could stand against it between two empty stools. Sirius leaned past him, pressing against his side. “Bailey, gimme a Bud Light,” Sirius called, then pulled away, turning so he could lean an elbow against the bar and face Harry. Harry glanced over at him and bit his lip.

Sirius was looking at Harry with a warmth Harry’d had enough hookups to recognize. His eyes skimmed over Harry too fast for Harry to follow, but he was definitely interested in what he saw. His gaze lingered a moment on the v-neck of Harry’s collar, the top of his head, his bare arm and where his hand rested on the bar.

Then a pint glass slid across the bar and hit Harry’s fingertips. They both looked away.

“Fuck, Bailey, do I even have to ask?” Sirius demanded, sounding like he was only half-joking. He reached past Harry again to slide the glass back a few inches toward the bartender. “A bottle. You think I trust your tap lines?”

Bailey made a rude gesture, but collected the glass and replaced it with a bottle, prying the top off first. 

Harry’d never given serious thought to being with someone older, but that had definitely changed approximately three seconds after he heard Sirius say “fuck” out on Dean’s street. He couldn’t be quite _that_ much older, anyway. 

Harry cautiously sipped his beer, but it was quickly evident no one was going to side-eye someone a few years shy of twenty-one for drinking in this place. He turned to face Sirius, and noticed through his eyelashes that Sirius was watching him just as intently as before. Harry gathered his courage and looked back, setting aside the bottle.

“I like your tattoo,” he said, looking at the tail end of something dark orange and red, maybe flame, that snaked up Sirius’ neck an inch past the collar of his jacket.

“Which one?” Sirius asked with a smile, pushing back his left sleeve to show Harry a line of oblong circles, like links in a chain but in a series of warm colors, that advanced up his forearm.

“Both,” Harry said, helpless not to notice Sirius had long-fingered, elegant hands that would have looked more appropriate on a piano than the handlebars of his bike.

“Who said I only had two?” Sirius eased closer and stretched his leg out so that his calf was pressed against Harry’s. 

Harry felt painfully alert, but also strangely at ease. He grinned back at Sirius and twisted the bottle back and forth on the bar, his hand wet from the condensation. He let his gaze stray now that it was obvious they were both flirting, and it wouldn’t necessarily be unwelcome. Sirius was almost skinny in the waist compared to the breadth of his shoulders, and his legs were long and lean, accentuated by black jeans that hugged his thighs, the cuffs pulled down tightly over the top of his well-worn black leather boots.

“I guess until I see the rest, I can’t say for sure,” Harry said. Sirius laughed, and it was just like the last one: a short burst of sound. Then he reached out and picked up Harry’s beer, took a long pull, and handed it back to him. Harry drank, too, imagining he could taste Sirius on the slightly-warmed rim. He thought Sirius had the same thought, based on how closely he watched Harry’s mouth.

“Wanna get out of here?” Sirius murmured. Harry nodded eagerly and set the bottle back down so fast he almost upset it, but Sirius reached out and covered Harry’s hand with his, chuckling, and kept it upright. Then he tangled their fingers together and led Harry back out the way they’d come.

“Do you need to pay?” Harry leaned toward him to ask when they were almost to the door.

Sirius gave him a funny little smile. “I’m not exactly a customer,” he murmured. Then he rubbed the middle of Harry’s palm with his thumb, and Harry’s throat got too tight for him to ask anything else.

They were barely out the door when Sirius stepped toward Harry, put his hands on Harry’s hips, and walked him backward til his back was pressed against the wall. Then he peered into Harry’s face, letting go of him with one hand so he could brush Harry’s hair from his face.

“This okay?” 

Harry, throat definitely not working now, could only nod, and reach out for whatever he could touch: a handful of Sirius’ shirt, bunched at his stomach, and his waist. His t-shirt was thin and the lining of his jacket was startlingly warm against the back of Harry’s hand.

Sirius stepped closer with a soft little growl, and at the same moment pulled their lower bodies together with the hand that still held Harry’s hip, firmly, hot as a brand. Harry was embarrassed at his automatic, needy whimper, and that he was hard and aching against Sirus’ thigh, but he couldn’t feel self-conscious because he felt Sirius’ cock, too, just as hard.

Then Sirius was kissing him, gently but insistently, his mouth briefly, then his neck, then his jaw, then his mouth again.

“You’re so...fuck. Such a surprise,” he said, and then kissed Harry again more deeply, his tongue drawing a warm path over Harry’s lower lip. Harry meant to kiss back, but mostly he just panted through his parted lips, and ground against Sirius’ leg, like the pathetic teenager he was. Nothing like this had ever happened to him. He’d fooled around, sure, but it had always been discussed in advance, with very little spontaneity, and it was full of awkwardness and fumbling. Now he felt like something had been ignited in him that pushed aside all conscious thought. Everything Sirius did felt amazing, and every response Harry gave felt right.

Sirius drew back and slid his hand down the front of Harry’s jeans, cupping him, and then tilted his head til they were looking one another straight in the eye again. Sirius had ridiculous eyelashes, and faint silver lines through his irises that explained why his blue eyes had looked grey off and on during the night, depending on the light.

“Still okay?” he asked shortly, and Harry thrust into his palm in answer. “Fuck,” Sirius breathed, and Harry thought he could see his pupils dilate just a bit. “You’re really hard, aren’t you, baby?” 

The door opened at that inopportune moment, and at least three people came through, talking amongst themselves. Instead of stopping, Sirius angled his body so they would only see Sirius’ back, and his sure touch between Harry’s legs didn’t let up. Somewhere between horrified and delighted, Harry groaned and pressed his face against Sirius’ chest and inhaled deeply. Sirius smelled like sweat, a spicy, faint aftershave or soap, cigarettes and wind. 

The people coming out pretended not to notice them; their conversation stopped abruptly and they hurried along. Sirius put his mouth next to Harry’s ear. “Could I make you come like this? Through your clothes?” He rubbed Harry’s shaft more firmly. “God, that would be so fucking hot.” 

Harry shivered and his cock jumped. He swore he felt the curve of Sirius’ smile, and definitely felt his warm breath when he chuckled again. “You like it when I talk to you?” 

“Yeah,” Harry managed, his cheeks red, but his face was safely hidden still. Sirius’ other hand roamed up his back and threaded through his hair, cradling his head against Sirius’ chest, while the other kept moving between them, maddeningly slow. Any more friction would have been painful; Sirius gave him just enough, and mostly just pressure, kneading him.

“Almost isn’t fair,” he went on. “You feel so good. I bet you’ve got a really pretty cock, and I won’t even get to see it, let alone taste it.”

“Fuck,” Harry said, feeling increasingly desperate. He almost wanted to jerk his fly open and show Sirius, anything for more of this quiet praise, but they were three feet from the entrance to the bar, out in plain sight. If they hadn’t been… But as it was, he reached around Sirius’ back and grasped his ass. He had narrow hips but instead of flat, his buttocks were surprisingly round, and satisfyingly hard in Harry’s palms. Even more gratifying was the puff of involuntary breath Sirius let out, groaning at Harry’s touch.

He ground harder against Harry. He felt big, and had to be uncomfortably restricted by his jeans.

“Wanna see you too,” Harry admitted. “You...fuck, you feel…”

Sirius groaned, abruptly twisting out of Harry’s grasp. Harry, slack-jawed, blinked at him and slumped against the wall, but he only had moment to take in Sirius, breathing hard, wild-eyed, before he had seized Harry by the hips against and spun him around. Harry’s hands hit the wall, and Sirius pressed himself snug up against Harry’s ass, then put his hand right back where it had been before. The tip of Harry’s cock was practically past the waistband of his underwear, and there was a damp patch there. Sirius, feeling it, jerked his hips against Harry’s ass.

Sirius’ cock was a hard rod laid along Harry’s cleft. The startling pressure against his hole did wonders for Harry’s imagination, so that it only took two more firm thrusts from Sirius, and his thumb happening to make the barest contact with the tip of Harry’s cock, before Harry came, half in his pants and half on his stomach. Sirius ground them together one last time, almost cruelly, and slipped two of those long, elegant fingers in Harry’s mouth. When Harry sucked, hard and eagerly, he felt Sirius’ cock throb, and Sirius nipped his neck then mouthed the spot, shuddering behind him.

The door opened again, and Harry hastily straightened up from the wall, only to stagger back against Sirius. Sirius caught him and held him tightly, his arms locked around Harry’s chest, kissing him again. His temple, his shoulder.

“Fuck, kid.” He slowly let Harry go when he felt that Harry was steady on his feet. Harry turned hesitantly, sticky and uncomfortable and, in the wake of the lust-driven rush, marveling at what they’d just done. Sirius watched him quietly, then reached behind him to put his hand on the small of Harry’s back. “Come on. I’ll take you home.” 

They walked slowly toward the bike, and then Sirius paused and rummaged in the side compartment before getting on. He pulled out a simple black helmet, dusted out the inside and set it on Harry’s head.

Harry looked at him curiously while Sirius’ nimble fingers buckled the strap under his chin. “You didn’t make me wear this before.”

Sirius glanced at Harry’s eyes, then quickly back down, expression inscrutable. “Forgot,” he said absently, which was clearly bullshit. Harry didn’t press.

Harry wasn’t sure what he’d expected to happen, but somehow this wasn’t it, getting back on the bike behind Sirius and calling directions into Sirius’ ear whenever Sirius tilted his head. Sirius slowed down a few blocks away from Harry’s house, though, almost coasting along the dark street. Then he shut off the engine and they both sat unmoving for a moment, Harry’s hands lingering on Sirius’ waist.

Sirius was staring, as though mesmerized, at something on the street. Looking, Harry stiffened when he realized that his dad’s patrol car was parked on the curb outside their dark house.

“My dad’s a cop,” he said, and then felt the need to add some kind of qualifier, but couldn’t think of anything. Sirius stroked his arm, seeming unbothered, to Harry’s relief. When another moment of silence passed, Harry realized this was it. He was going to get off the bike, go inside and probably never see Sirius again. He wondered if he’d ever have another experience like this, but grimly thought he wasn’t likely to.

He slid off, took off the helmet, and rubbed the back of his neck. Sirius looked over at him, a considering look on his shadowed face, but didn’t say anything. Harry sighed internally, managed a smile, and handed over the helmet.

“Bye, then,” he said. “It was…” he bit his lip and then smiled up at Sirius, flushed. “It was great,” he admitted quietly, then turned his reddened face away and started toward the house.

“Hey, Harry,” Sirius called just as he stepped onto the sidewalk. Harry turned so fast he was half-surprised he didn’t stumble. Sirius still sat unmoving, unutterably sexy with his arms folded, the bike leaning toward the left where he was supporting it with one bent leg. “Which garage is it, that you work at?”

Harry smiled, his heart kicking hard against his ribs. “Frank Long’s,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound too eager.

Sirius gave him that half-smile, flashing the left dimple, and nodded. “See you around, then.” He winked and started the engine, then shot off down the street faster than he’d gone the entire time Harry had been on the bike with him. Harry’s neighbors’ dogs went into a barking frenzy from the house next door, and two doors down an upstairs light went on.

Harry walked the block and a half slowly, trotted down the stairs to the basement entrance, and flopped down on the bed in the guest room. It was weird, being down here in this half-empty room, but it might have been more odd to be in his own room, which was already half-packed. He moved out in the morning; his parents’ request, if he wasn’t going to go to school.

When he’d left earlier that night he’d felt like he was drifting, anchorless. Now he couldn’t wait to go to work on Monday. Now, when he closed his eyes, he saw grey eyes, heard a rough voice in his ear, and couldn’t stop smiling.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to aroundloafofbread for the beta read! <333

1995

When Harry was fifteen, his affable, even-keel and constant tease of a father disappeared into the garage and locked the door for three consecutive evenings. It took Harry a day to notice, caught up as he was in his own teenage affairs, a second day to decide to talk to his mother and the third to summon the courage.

“What’s up with him?”

She was sitting at the kitchen table when he came in, and she silently nodded at the chair across from her without having to ask what Harry meant.

“It’s a long story.”

Apparently, back in school, his dad had three best friends. Not just best friends, his mother was quick to add. Brothers. Harry, who had Ron and Hermione, thought he understood.

“Not like your friends,” she said at once. “They were especially close. Close in a way people can only get when some of them have particular difficulties, when they keep secrets for each other.”

“Okay,” Harry said. “How come I’ve never met them?”

“They...grew apart. Over an incident when they were still kids.” She ran a hand through her hair, and Harry realized that whatever was going on was affecting her deeply too. “It was an incident that ended with two of them going to prison.”

Harry sat back, eyes wide. “Not dad?”

Lily shook her head. “No. There was already a wedge between them by then.” She blushed and Harry smiled ruefully.

“Right, me.”

“Me,” she corrected with a brief smile. “The group was always kind of into troublemaking. Innocent stuff, for the most part, but I got impatient about it.” She shrugged. Harry got it. After his mother turned up pregnant at sixteen, she’d probably insisted his dad start following the straight and narrow. Straight from high school to a career in law enforcement, apparently.

“It was just supposed to be a prank, but it went really, really wrong.” She looked pale. “It’s hard for me to talk about it. Maybe some other time…”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and Harry realized she was crying. He couldn’t remember ever seeing her cry.

“Hey, mom,” he said softly, reaching across the table toward her. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she said with a weak smile, taking his hand and squeezing it firmly. “But anyway, one of the boys...men...was released this week.”

“Oh.” Harry still wasn’t sure he understood, but before any more could be said, the oven timer rang and his mom took her hand back and stood up.

“I made mac and cheese,” she said brightly.

* * *

1998

Harry went into work eagerly on Monday—and every morning that week—expecting Sirius to come by. He didn’t.

By Friday, Harry had given up pretending he wasn’t moping. The other mechanic in the shop, Hagrid, finally asked him what was wrong in the middle of the afternoon. They were each on one side of a twelve-year-old silver Cadillac, trying to work out the curious matching dents on its two front side panels.

“Your friends left already, Harry?”

Harry looked over the hood of the car at Hagrid, confused. “Not yet, why?”

“But soon, right?” Hagrid’s frown was sympathetic. “Getting a bit depressing, innit? Knowing you’ll be all alone?”

Harry’s cheeks flushed. “I’m not going to be _all alone_ ,” he muttered.

“Right, right,” Hagrid said hastily. “There’s always phone calls! And e-mails!”

Harry rubbed his forehead, then grimaced when he realized he’d smeared grease on his temple. “I’m not depressed.”

Hagrid snorted, and Harry wrinkled his nose.

“I’m not upset about _that_ ,” he said, which was half-true. His feelings about “that” were still mostly lurking in the back of his mind. “I just had a...disappointment, I guess, this week.”

Hagrid looked at Harry like he had no idea what he was talking about, but wanted to appear understanding, and nodded cautiously. Harry flexed the last dent out of his side and rolled backward on the wheeled stool he was sitting on, getting up.

“But I’m going out tonight, so I won’t be able to stay late.”

Hagrid nodded a moment, then realized the implications of what Harry had said, and looked crestfallen.

“But I’ll check everything Monday morning,” Harry was quick to add. “First thing.”

Hagrid smiled ruefully. “You’re the best, Harry.”

Hermione, who had lectured him for twenty minutes the previous weekend on how inconsiderate it was to leave a party without telling your friends, was the only one who knew anything about Sirius. And she didn’t know much.

Still, she gave him a knowing, pitying look when he showed up at Ron’s and joined them on the wrought-iron chairs in the front yard. “Your hook-up didn’t call?”

“Hook-up!” Ron exclaimed, before Harry could answer her. “From where? I thought you weren’t supposed to date customers.”

“Not from work,” Harry shot back, offended. Frank’s clientele consisted mostly of the elderly. “Jesus.”

“Not someone from the party?” Ron’s eyes were understandably wide. Anyone that Harry could have hooked up with there would be among their closest friends. Harry shook his head.

“Not exactly.”

“Someone he bumped into on the street,” Hermione said, looking just as suspicious about that explanation as she had when Harry gave it to her on Saturday morning.

“Fuck, Harry, that’s how people get murdered,” said Ron, but he looked interested. “A girl or a boy?”

 _Neither_ was the obvious answer, but Harry didn’t want to draw too much attention to his brush with taboo. “A man,” was what he settled on.

Ron continued to look interested, but also cautious. “And it’s no one we know?”

Harry shook his head, and Hermione looked pained. “You really should be careful, Harry. Ron is being an idiot, but he’s not wrong. That’s not always safe, especially…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Harry said, but tried not to sound too dismissive. She was always worried that Harry was going to misread a situation, and get beaten up instead of getting laid, when he tried to pick up men. That happened, of course, but probably not as often as she thought, and not to Harry. Not so far.

“But he didn’t call? I hate it when that happens.”

Harry hesitated. “Well, he couldn’t really call. We didn’t exchange numbers.”

“Oh. That bad, was it?”

Harry glared. “No! It just…” he paused, suddenly feeling stupid. “He asked where I worked.”

“Okay?” Ron looked like he was missing something.

Harry felt similar. “I thought he was going to come by,” he explained, but it sounded ridiculous now that he was saying it out loud. Ron politely didn’t point that out.

Hermione continued to look worried. “You even told him where you worked? When he was just a stranger?”

Harry thought that was practically the least personal exchange they’d had, considering they’d come rubbing against each other, but he didn’t mention that to Hermione.

“Anyway, I guess that’s it. I need to just...I don’t know, accept rejection gracefully.”

Hermione’s thoughtful frown cleared to a look of surprise. “Oh, that’s right! You’ve never been dumped.”

“Dumped” felt like a very strong word to Harry, but he didn’t have time to object.

“That’s _right_ ,” Ron echoed incredulously. “Everyone always loves Harry.”

“ _He’s_ always the one to let the other person down easy,” Hermione said, nodding. “How does it feel from the other side? Better, or worse?”

Harry divided a glare between the two of them, but then gave it some thought and was surprised by the answer. “Better?” He hated disappointing people. It almost wasn’t worth getting tangled up with anyone, when the specter of the inevitable breakup was hanging over every moment. It hadn’t been like that with Sirius, though. Everything had been so intense and immediate, there hadn’t been room for Harry’s reflective thoughts. “But,” he added wanly, “it still really sucks.”

Ron patted him on the back then slung an arm around his shoulders. “Do you want to get drunk?”

Harry laughed, pushing Ron off of him with an incredulous look. “What is it with you and drinking all of a sudden?”

“I’m training for college life,” Ron explained. “I don’t want to be the only lightweight. That would be embarrassing.”

The casual mention of the end of life as Harry knew it stung, but he tried not to show it and must have succeeded, because neither Ron nor Hermione turned pitying. Instead they volleyed back and forth about the competing values of life experience acquisition and academic achievement for the next fifteen minutes while Harry bleakly re-lived a few choice moments from his night with Sirius, wishing he’d appreciated everything more while it was happening.

“Want to go get pizza?” Ron asked Harry, breaking into his reverie.

“No, I’m going home for dinner. I promised mom.”

“That’s nice,” Hermione said. “Everything’s good with them, then?”

Harry nodded. “Yeah. They didn’t kick me out. They just wanted me to have independence.” He and Hermione had had this conversation before, so Harry started it feeling like he had to come to his parents’ defense, but Hermione just nodded without argument this time.

“Cool. That’s good. Is your mom going to make that ridiculous macaroni and cheese?”

Harry grinned and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

When Harry was three, he declared that when he grew up, he was never going to eat anything but macaroni and cheese. His taste in food hadn’t evolved much since, but the stuff he’d been making from the blue box in his apartment all week didn’t compare to the baked version his mom always made from scratch to cheer him up.

“Do you want a ride?”

“No, I’ll walk.”

Hermione and Ron shared a brief smile, but neither of them said anything. They’d known Harry long enough not to be surprised that he’d walk everywhere if he could.

Though, technically, he changed into his running shoes and jogged there. It was only four miles, and he’d barely broken a sweat when he reached the end of the block and slowed to a walk. It was strange to be approaching the house like this, at the end of the day after a short run. It almost felt like he’d stepped back in time a week or more, and nothing had changed. Even his neighbor Nelly Navinski was out on her porch like the fixture she was, watching him approach with a familiar glint in her eye and a disapproving frown.

“A little late, aren’t you, Mr. Potter?”

He had no idea what she was talking about. “Sorry if I am, Ms. Navinski,” he said as politely as he could while raising his voice to be sure she heard him. He noticed that the bed of hostas that edged her front porch needed weeding. If he still lived at home, his dad probably would have sent him over to do it.

“Your mother sets the table at five o’clock.”

That wasn’t true, but Harry wasn’t going to correct her. “I’d better hurry then. Have a great night.”

He reached his—or, his parents’—house, and studied it with a new appreciation for the tidy yard, the wide driveway past the south side of toward the backyard, the generous Craftsman-style porch and windows.

“Harry! You made it!” his dad was coming around from the garage, still in the bottom half of his uniform and a clean t-shirt.

“Yeah, of course,” Harry muttered, but smiled back as his dad hugged him. He smelled like starch and aftershave. Harry knew he looked like his father, but he thought he was destined to _always_ look like a younger version. He had given up hope on closing the last few inches of the gap between their respective heights or ever sharing his father’s broad frame.

“You’re in luck, you know,” his dad said, leaning in with a wink as they walked up the porch steps together. “Your mom made mac and cheese.”

* * *

An hour later, his parents walked him to the door like he was a guest, and they all stood awkwardly for a silent moment.

“You’re sure you don’t want a ride?” James asked for the third time.

“Yep,” Harry said.

“Do you have your pepper spray?”

“Yep,” Harry said, and smiled.

His parents exchanged a quick glance, then his mother spoke as though by mutual agreement. “Harry. Your dad and I were talking. We think it might have been a mistake, having you move out after graduation. You don’t have to. You could stay here, and if you want your own space, you could use the basement. It has its own entrance and we could install a kitchenette…”

Harry interrupted her with a quiet laugh. “No, you guys. I think I need my own place. I’m an adult, right?” He still wasn’t sure about the little apartment with the noisy upstairs neighbor, but the idea of moving back in with his parents felt worse. “I promise.”

His mom reached out and squeezed his hand for a second, then let go with a pained look.

“If you’re sure.”

It was a longer distance back to his place, so he decided to walk the first stretch. He was almost to the end of the block when he heard the unmistakable sound of a motorcycle engine, and he turned around so fast he had a half-moment of dizziness.

It wasn’t close to dark yet, but the sky had dimmed enough that the street reminded him just a bit of the one near Neville’s when he’d encountered Sirius the first time. That night, he’d heard the engine sputter and fade, but tonight it was running strong. Harry wasn’t enough of a connoisseur to be sure he was hearing the same machine tonight that he had then, but he hoped fervently that was the case.

Like a wish granted, the black bike sped around the turn down his parents’ street at a forty-five degree angle, Sirius balanced above it one-handed, the other tucking his wind-tousled hair behind his ear.

Harry froze. He’d been about to step into the street and lift his hand, but now that felt like too much. Maybe Sirius wasn’t coming by the house on purpose. Maybe he’d forgotten that this was Harry’s street.

But the bike slowed as Sirius went past the Potters’ bungalow and he turned his head to give it a thorough look.

Harry’s heart was beating hard. He thought again of trying to get Sirius’ attention, but stayed frozen on the sidewalk instead. Sirius’ old bike growled as he accelerated at the far edge of the Potters’ yard, and he was glancing back over his shoulder as he came past Harry. Sirius never looked his way.

Harry could smell leather, skin-warm. He felt a sure hand against him, a breath and low chuckle in his ear. He walked slowly the whole way home, the night seeming intensely dark, the stars especially bright, the walk very solitary.

* * *

Before Harry started work at the shop full time, Hagrid had been the only full-time mechanic. Among his responsibilities was keeping the books for Frank, who had a pretty hands-off approach to running the establishment he’d inherited from his father.

Harry wasn’t especially good with numbers, but he was better than Hagrid, so he’d long-ago agreed to check over the simple math for his coworker before the boss came in to do it himself. Over the years, Harry had only found a couple of mistakes, but it made Hagrid feel better and Harry didn’t mind.

Then again, before he started working full time, he’d always looked over the books during the weekend. Now that he was on a standard, Monday-through-Friday, eight-to-five schedule, that meant he had to either stay late Friday, or come in at five in the morning on Monday. Harry wasn’t a morning person, but he hadn’t really thought it through on Friday or he might have told Ron and Hermione they’d just hate to wait on him and done it then.

He drove his old S10 into work so he wouldn’t have to wake up early enough to jog, and to his surprise, there was already a truck in the spot he usually claimed. A familiar red four-door that belonged to Frank. Harry parked beside it, his hands resting on the wheel, and thought over his options. He hadn’t exactly misled Frank about his agreement with Hagrid concerning the books, but it hadn’t come up, either. Now he wondered whether it was weirder to back out of the parking lot and go home, or go in and pretend to have some shop work to do.

In the end, Harry got tired of debating, turned the truck off, and got out. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his morning driving back and forth from his apartment. He was fishing for his keys as he reached for the door, and realized with surprise it was already unlocked; in fact, it was cracked open.

As soon as Harry stepped inside, he realized his mistake. The shop was still dark. The only light came in a square through the opaque glass window in the top half of the office door on the other side of the shop bay. Pulled up in front of it were three motorcycles.

Frank wasn’t here alone, and his guests hadn’t parked outside. The sun was just rising, and because Harry had always had uncanny timing, the office door opened just then and raised, rough voices spilled out.

Amid them, sounding deferential, was Frank’s: “Look, I told you I didn’t know.”

“It’s your job to know. And don’t fucking forget it.”

Harry realized he should have tried to leave unnoticed as soon as he’d seen the bikes, but of course it was too late now. The man silhouetted in the doorway was big, and his voice was familiar. As he turned and caught sight of Harry, Harry recognized him as the older man from the bar where Sirius had taken him.

And there, over his shoulder, was Sirius.

“What a coincidence,” sneered the big man coolly. “Look, Sirius. It’s your date.”

Harry didn’t know where to look. There was a third man with them, a wiry younger guy with a thin, long beard. He probably wasn’t a lot older than Harry. He was turning his head back and forth between the big guy and Sirius in bafflement, and Harry understood the impulse.

“What’s…” Frank moved around in the office until he saw Harry, then paused and looked pale. “Harry, what are you doing here? We don’t open for another two and a half hours.” He grimaced when the big guy looked at him askance. “I didn’t know he would…”

“I think we’ve established that you don’t know shit, Frank,” Sirius said brightly, elbowing past the other two men with an easy smile. Harry felt his idiotic heart skip a beat as Sirius ambled closer, one thumb hooked in the belt loop on his hip, the other reaching out for Harry. Harry, unthinking, stepped into the embrace when Sirius slid a hand around his waist as though they had a history of intimacy and not one ill-fated encounter against the exterior wall of a seedy bar.

“People come to work early sometimes, y’know?”

Harry, sure he only somewhat understood whatever was happening, swallowed and nodded. “I check the books for Hagrid at the end of the month,” he admitted, muttering just loudly enough for Frank to be able to hear. The secret felt incidental in light of the implications of the past few minutes. “Didn’t get to it Friday night.”

Sirius smelled the same as Harry remembered, but with a hint of sweat. When he looked sidelong at Harry with a quick smile, Harry saw signs of strain beneath his relaxed facade. There was a little redness in his eyes, a heavy furrow in his brow that Harry didn’t recall. Harry had taken a quick shower that morning. His hair was still slightly damp in the back. Sirius, he realized, wasn’t beginning his day, but ending it.

“Let’s go,” muttered the big guy, with a final cold stare at Harry. He seized one of the bikes by the handlebars and started walking it toward the overhead door, and the younger guy went ahead to open it. While they were turned away, Sirius looked down at Harry.

“You aren’t much for staying where you’re supposed to, are you, kid?” He pulled back, his hand lingering on Harry’s waist, and reached up with his other hand to tuck a strand of hair behind Harry’s ear. His eyes were bluer, for some reason, in the dimness of the unlit shop. “Get my number from Frank,” he said more lowly, with a quick glance toward the other two men, who were getting on their bikes. “We oughta talk.”

Sirius let him go and started toward his own ride. It wasn’t the Black Shadow, Harry noticed absently. Something newer, a stripped-down Harley with a jade-green, curvy body style. Harry crossed his arms, indignant. He wanted to say something cool and distant, like, _sure, whatever,_ or _I’m not interested, sorry,_ or _actually I’d rather we just make it a one time thing._

But he couldn’t bring himself to lie, so he just stood there holding himself while Sirius got on, shot him a last uneasy smile, and started up to roll out after his companions.

“Harry,” Frank said after a few moments, when the bikes’ engine noise had faded enough he could be heard without raising his voice. “Are you... _hooking up_ with Sirius Black?”

Harry turned to Frank, an eyebrow raised. “So what?”

Frank’s color was returning in force to his face, so it was hard to say whether his dark red cheeks and Harry’s remark were just coincidence.

Harry hadn’t intended to say anything about what he’d stumbled into, but in light of Frank’s comment he couldn’t stop himself. “What were they doing here at this time of day?” He looked around casually, reminding Frank without having to say anything else that there weren’t any tools out; Hagrid was absent; no one had scheduled any overtime for an emergency repair on a motorcycle.

Frank hung his head. “Harry, listen to me. I know what your dad does. I know you’re a bright kid. I also know what this might look like. I need you to hear me when I say there’s nothing unlawful going on here. There’s _not_.”

“Okay,” Harry said, still feeling somewhat dubious. If someone had asked him a little earlier that morning whether he trusted Frank to be law-abiding, he would have said yes. Harry, for himself, had never given his feelings about outlaws a very close look, and he was shying from the subject more deliberately than ever because of the way it could reflect on what he’d done with Sirius. Sirius Black, Harry remembered. He had a last name, now, and…

“Sirius said I should get his number from you,” he blurted when Frank started to retreat back into the office, his shoulders still hunched.

Frank looked back, mouth pulled into a frown. He was only a couple of years older than Harry’s dad, but he looked decades older just then, stress creasing his face, a light sweat flattening his hair on his temples so it looked thin.

“I’ve known your dad since school,” he murmured. “I’m not sure I’m willing to help you break his heart. I’ve heard of teenage rebellion, Harry, but Jesus. Fuck.”

Harry was a little startled by Frank’s vehemence, and flustered at the mention of his dad. What did any of this have to do with Harry’s dad? In reality, he kind of thought his mom would be the one off-put by a fling with someone she saw as too old for him. Harry was uncomfortably aware of how his mother underestimated his toughness, and how his father overestimated it.

Frank was digging his wallet out of his pocket, so Harry didn’t have to figure out how to argue. He opened it, pulled out a worn business card, and read a number from the back of it. Harry hastily got a pen out of his own pocket and wrote the numbers on the back of his hand.

Frank looked at Harry with a conflicted expression, and seemed about to say something cutting, but then he visibly deflated. His shoulders slumped, and instead he just said, “Be careful,” and closed the door to the office firmly behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a smutty chapter in a smutty fic but it contracted Plot Syndrome instead. Sorry! But I'd still love to know your thoughts. <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The comments were true, three chapters wasn't enough. I think four should be, though!

Harry didn’t want to reach out too soon, or wait too long. He didn’t know the etiquette for this sort of thing. And he was still irritated. Though every time he recalled the way Sirius had touched him with such casual entitlement, his irritation evaporated again.

But that was irritating, too. It made him feel too weak, too childish. And though that feeling was something of a thrill in the moment with Sirius, when he looked at it from a safe distance he didn’t like it.

To spare himself any more restless pacing, Harry finally called the next morning at eleven. 

The phone rang so many times he almost hung up. Then, finally, “Hello?”

He sounded like he’d been sleeping. Harry had heard of sleeping all day, but really only in the context of people who worked a night shift. “Hi. It’s, er, Harry? I got your number from Frank.”

He felt stupid as soon as he said it. Of course he’d gotten the number from Frank. Who else—

“Harry. Of course it’s you. Hey, kid.” He still sounded sleepy, and the combination of imagining what he must look like, sleep-mussed under a tangled sheet somewhere, and both him saying Harry’s name and calling him “kid,” had Harry speechless. Fortunately, Sirius went on without waiting for a reply.

“Do you sleep? Fuck.”

Harry nervously double-checked the clock. It was a quarter after eleven. “I didn’t realize it was too early, I guess. We could have this, um, chat, later?”

 _‘Chat,’ really, Potter_? It felt like the dorkiest possible word. Harry massaged his forehead.

“Nah, it’s okay,” Sirius said at once. “D’you have your own line?”

Harry frowned. “Yeah,” he said, drawing the word out, then realized Sirius wouldn’t know where Harry lived now. He’d dropped Harry at his parents’ house. (Then he’d driven by…)

“I have my own place. I moved out last week.” He smiled wryly. “The morning after I met you, actually.”

For a while there was no reply. Harry wondered if he’d done the wrong thing, mentioning their hook-up. But Sirius _had_ told him to call, hadn’t he? Harry tried not to squirm or count the seconds while he waited.

“Cool. Good for you,” Sirius said warmly. Then his tone shifted. “Kid, I needed to talk to you, since...well, since I figured out a couple things.”

“Okay.”

Sirius cleared his throat, but the noise was faint, like he’d held the phone away while he did it.

“That deal at Frank’s. Don’t worry about it, okay?”

Harry frowned, confused. “I wasn’t worried about it,” he said, half-sincere. 

“I mean…” Sirius’ voice sounded like Harry remembered it, but all his teasing, seductive confidence was overlaid with tension, clipping his words and straining his tone. “I mean you shouldn’t involve yourself.”

Ah. Harry should have figured out what Sirius was getting at sooner.

”I wouldn’t,” he said at once. “It’s none of my business.”

“Maybe...there are other places to work?”

Harry grimaced. He didn’t have a lot of skills, but couldn’t bring himself to admit that. And he knew a few other mechanics, some of whom had tried to lure him away from Frank’s before. He’d learned enough in those conversations to be sure that he had a good gig. “The pay, and the hours, and the work—everything—would be worse.”

“Okay.” He could hear Sirius’ breathing on the other end of the line. It made him feel warm under his collar. Harry had never had a crush like this. He was starting to feel bad for some of the unkind things he’d thought about his friends over the years when they were dealing with infatuations that Harry had no patience for. 

“Is that why you wanted me to call?” Harry said, trying and failing at hiding his disappointment. Sirius made a small sound on the other end of the line, like he was trying not to laugh. Harry sat up and scowled down at his knees, drawing them up to loop his arm around them.

“Yeah, that’s why.”

Harry felt sick with disappointment, even though he knew rationally he was overreacting. People had casual, one-night things all the time. In fact, guys his age were always _hoping_ for casual, one-night things. Harry was _lucky_. So why did he feel like Sirius had just kicked him in the stomach?

“I thought maybe…” he rubbed his cheek against his knee, the phone propped up against his other ear. He hated himself already for saying this, but now that he’d started he couldn’t stop. “That you might want to see me again. You seemed, um, glad to see me at the shop.”

He remembered Sirius slipping his arm around Harry’s waist, so naturally.

Sirius was quiet on the other end of the line. Harry just waited, miserable. It was too late to take his words back, and he couldn’t think of anything else to add that wouldn’t make him sound even more pathetic.

“Look, kid,” he said eventually in a low voice. “I had a lot of fun the other night. You’re...something, really. But it was kind of an impulsive deal, you know?”

Harry did know. “Sure,” he said, proud when the word came out in a normal, unaffected voice.

“I think I might be even older than you think I am,” Sirius went on, sounding a little warmer. “And I’m definitely not the right crowd, if you know what I mean.”

He could guess. “Sure,” he said again, this time his voice a little higher than he’d intended it to be. He winced. “Whatever. If you’re not, like, into it, then it’s fine.”

Another silence and a stifled sigh in Harry’s ear. “That’s not how I’d describe things. You can do about a hundred thousand times better, kid, trust me.”

Harry laughed. He couldn’t really bring himself to affirmatively agree, it was too ridiculous. When people talked about what was good for Harry, he found himself picturing this paper-cut-out sort of scene where he was arranged on the immaculate green lawn of some stately brick university, a sharp-dressed blond two years older than him and in his major pointing out something interesting in the textbook open in his lap.

Frankly, if Sirius was the type to say something like that, maybe Harry should be glad they wouldn’t see each other again. As his temper flared, he bit out, “I guess there’s nothing else to talk about, then. See you. Or not.” He hung up and tossed his cordless receiver into the chair beside the couch, flopping back on the squeaky cushions.

Harry wondered how long the sense of self-satisfaction that flooded him was going to last. 

(The answer turned out to be fifteen minutes.)

* * *

“Harry, come on, you’re the only one left who isn’t completely useless,” Padma pleaded. 

“What the fuck,” shouted Bailey from across the room, and Ernie threw a pillow at her. 

“Harsh, Patil,” he added.

“I value honesty,” she said, with a pitiless shrug for both of them, and shoved Harry in the shoulder so hard he almost lost his balance and fell from his perch on the arm of the old loveseat by the window.

“Harry, please, you’re the only one who can anticipate all of Hermione’s dirty tricks.”

Harry wanted to play, but he always felt like he had to wait to be asked to a team. Now that he had been, he grinned instead of playing coy. “Sure. It doesn’t hurt that I didn’t have half a bowl of spiked jello,” he added, scooping up the pillow and throwing it back at Ernie.

“I didn’t _know_ ,” Ernie moaned, rolling over and clutching his head.

“Sure.”

Harry followed Padma out of the cabin into the inky dark outdoors, the little bit of moonlight that penetrated the dense clouds pouring out over the lakewater to his right, the trees rising up ominously to his left. Padma headed toward the trees, where Dean and Theo Knott were waiting.

“No wonder you wanted me,” Harry murmured to her without thinking, then blushed, feeling like a jerk.

Padma didn’t contradict him. “Yeah, you never know when Dean will burst into tears or a rant these days, but Theo’s not so bad.”

She didn’t even lower her voice — if anything she raised it to ensure Dean and Theo would both hear her — which Harry should have expected, having known her since kindergarten. Still, he winced.

Dean was pretending not to have heard, but Theo looked surprised, then amused.

“Thanks, Patil,” he told her with a strange little bow. Theo was an odd guy. He’d never been a part of their group, always off with his friends who went to the private school in town, but he’d been at the graduation party and the three times they’d hung out since. Harry was trying to keep an open mind.

“All right, let’s divide and conquer,” Padma announced, their de facto captain. Everyone nodded, and then, with characteristic unpredictability, she reached out and snagged Theo by the elbow. “Harry, you get Dean. We’ll each make one pass around the outer boundary and meet up when we intersect. Got it?”

Harry nodded, and saw Dean scuff his shoe against the dirt in his peripheral vision.

“Although obviously if you see the flag, get it and bring it here.” She pointed to the tree Theo was standing beside, which had an orange X spray-painted on it. “This is our base.” It was in plain view of the cabin.

“Isn’t the base supposed to be secret?” Theo asked, but he didn’t look bothered.

“Hidden in plain sight,” Padma said flippantly. “Ready? Let’s go.”

Harry and Dean walked in the opposite direction of Padma and Theo. The trees were close and dark. It was a little creepy and would have been much more so alone. Harry stayed close to Dean, who didn’t seem affected by their surroundings at all.

“If you don’t feel like playing, it’s fine,” Harry said after a couple minutes.

Dean shrugged. “It’s better than sitting around drinking.”

“Sure,” Harry agreed, and they fell silent again.

This time Dean spoke first. “I just miss him. And he never really explained, so I obsess about it constantly and don’t get anywhere.”

Harry remembered what Seamus had said when Harry caught him smoking, right before he’d gone out walking and run into Sirius. He hadn’t given it much thought since, too wrapped up in his own stuff. Now he wondered if he should have given Dean some kind of heads up. But he hadn’t had to be sworn to secrecy to know that wasn’t the sort of thing Seamus would have wanted him to repeat. 

“Maybe it’s just how some people react to big changes,” Harry offered.

“Did he say something to you?”

“No!” Harry said immediately. Then he squinted into the darkness. “Um, yes, but it wasn’t...anything, really.” _Just that he was planning to break up with you before you could break up with him_.

“What did he say?” Dean grabbed his arm. “Harry. You have to tell me exactly what he said.”

“I don’t remember,” Harry said, a half-truth, but he was desperate. “It was more about, like, knowing that you were going away and would move on.”

“I wouldn’t! I love him! He was supposed to come too.”

Harry shrugged, but he did sympathize. Dean had been a mess since graduation. “Maybe you should talk to him?”

“I’ve tried. He’s such an asshole, he hasn’t even called me back.” There were shouts in the trees that sounded like they were coming their way.

“Well, maybe he needs some time. Maybe you should keep trying.”

Dean let go of him and wrapped his arms around himself. “I don’t know. He always makes me work so much harder at everything than he does. At first I thought he was just doing _that_ again, but I don’t think so.” He dropped his head. “I think he wants to be done.” The voices were definitely getting louder. Harry could hear branches snapping and running feet.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Harry said quietly.

Someone streaked past carrying a rainbow flag on a pole, at least three people in hot pursuit, all of them shouting. Harry startled; his instinct was to run too. Dean, seeing it, smiled wryly. 

“Go ahead,” he said, waving Harry on. “I’ll meet Padma and Theo. Theo fucking Knott. That’s wild.” He walked off.

Harry turned and ran. He was fast, and he cut through a thin place in the trees and half-circled back so he could pluck the pole right out of Daphne’s hands in a maneuver so perfect it felt choreographed. The other three were torn between boos and cheers, and Harry laughed recklessly as he sprinted back toward his team’s home base.

No one could catch him; he was going to make it and win a week’s worth of bragging rights, he thought, leaping over a fallen branch, high on simple adrenaline.

Too late he realized the right thing to do would have been hanging back with Dean, who had that broken heart he was nursing, after all. But shadowing that thought was Harry’s nagging sense that if he had to wager, he would have bet that Seamus was right. He and Dean had been over when Dean picked a college and Seamus opted out.

That thought took the wind out of his sails as he reached base. He shoved the end of the flag into the ground at the foot of the tree, to indignant boos from his pursuers, who he now saw included Ron.

“How can someone so short be so fast?” Ron lamented, then his eyes widened when Harry vaulted into his arms. He caught Harry on instinct, and laughed, surprised. “What’s this for?”

“I love tall, sweaty men,” Harry said, squeezing him. Ron laughed harder and looped one arm around Harry’s back, lifting the other to pat Harry’s head.

“I love you too, Har.”

* * *

When Harry got to his parents’ for dinner that Friday night, his mother was waiting for him on the porch. 

Harry, surprised, paused on the second porch step and frowned. “Mom? What’s up?”

She stepped away from the door, which she’d been leaning against, and tugged him into a quick hug. When they pulled apart, she was smiling. It was a troubled smile, but it didn’t seem like the kind of expression she’d have if something horrible had happened.

“Are you okay? Dad — ?”

“We’re okay, but your dad had a scuffle when he was making an arrest yesterday. He looks…” her smile widened fractionally, even as she winced, her nose wrinkling. “He looks like hell. But it’s mostly just his vanity that’s hurt. I wanted to give you a heads up.”

“I have no vanity,” James argued, having apparently been waiting just inside the door. He came out and Harry’s breath caught. He understood why his mother had thought she should tell him what to expect, and he also thought she had undersold it.

“Dad, oh my god!” He started to reach out for him, then dropped his hands, worried he might accidentally touch some hidden wound. There was no way his injuries were confined to his face, right? And his face was so bruised and swollen his father wouldn’t have been recognizable without his trademark round-framed glasses and dark hair.

“I’m fine, really,” James said, stepping forward to initiate the hug. He smelled like the hospital.

“What happened?”

“It’s like your mom said, just a quirky arrest. Come in before everything’s too cold to eat.”

“It’s pizza,” Lily said. “It’s good when it’s cold. Answer your son’s questions.” She poked James in the waist. “I’ll go toss the salad.”

James sighed and leaned against the porch rail on both hands. “What does my son want to know?”

“I don’t know! What happened? Did you not have your weapon?”

James gave him a funny look. “The weapon is a last resort.”

“So, what then? You wrestled someone into submission?”

James snorted. “Not exactly.”

“Then stop making me guess?”

James looked out over the lawn, then back at Harry. His expression had shifted into an uncharacteristic solemnity that made a lump form in Harry’s throat.

“I got jumped. And...taken captive. Briefly.”

“ _Taken captive_ ,” Harry echoed, incredulously. His dad was supposed to just be a normal cop in a normal, not-so-big town. That kind of thing was for novels and movies, not real life, right? That’s how Harry had liked to think of his dad’s job. Important but ultimately not as risky as people assumed.

“Just briefly,” James said again.

“That doesn’t _matter_ ,” Harry said, raking his hands through his hair and studying James’ bruised face again. He winced. “But you’re definitely okay?”

“Yeah. This is the worst of it. Just got unlucky. But not as unlucky as the asshole who did it,” he added, looking smug. “It was worth it, for us to get him on assaulting a law enforcement officer. He was a really bad guy, and now he’ll go away for sure.”

“Okay,” Harry said. His hands were shaking. “God. It’s like I forgot your job is, like, dangerous.”

James laughed. “Oh, yeah?” He looked a little grim. “Well, this kind of thing isn’t usual. I’ll try my best to be sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Um, thanks,” Harry said, trying for levity but not actually able to get there. He swallowed.

“Hey, kiddo,” James murmured, hugging him again. “I’m sorry for scaring you guys.”

Harry hugged him back. “I’m just glad you’re okay. You’re really okay?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” James said, pushing him toward the door. “I’m completely okay. I even put dinner on the table tonight.”

“So, you drove to the pizza place and back?”

“That’s right, smartass. _And_ cut up tomatoes for the salad.”

Harry shot him a skeptical look over his shoulder as James followed him into the house.

“Okay, your mom did that. But I _could have_.”

* * *

On Monday morning, Harry came into the shop still yawning. He hadn’t slept well the night before. He hadn’t slept well for the past couple weeks if he was being honest, but he was pretty sure it was only a coincidence. 

Hagrid had been frowning down into the bowels of a geo metro convertible. He looked bigger than the car, hulking over the engine compartment, and the sight made Harry smile. Then Hagrid looked up, and his expression was so stricken that Harry was instantly alarmed.

“What’s wrong?”

“How’s yer dad, Harry?”

“Oh, he’s okay. You, er, heard what happened?” Harry rubbed the back of his head, ruffling his hair, a nervous habit. “I was pretty upset at first. He looks like shit, but he’s actually fine. Says it was all worth it.”

Hagrid didn’t look reassured. “So he told you?”

“Told me what happened? I mean, yeah. What are you…” 

“No — did he tell you who it was?”

Harry shrugged. “No, I guess not. Probably figured I wouldn’t know the name, right?”

Hagrid just kept looking at him. “I don’t suppose you would.” He sighed. “It was Jason Torres.”

“Yeah, I don’t know the name.”

“He’s the boss for the great lakes chapter of the Death Eaters,” Hagrid went on. The gang name rang a bell, but only faintly. Harry just shrugged again.

Beginning to seem frustrated, Hagrid looked over at the workbench, and seeing something there, walked to it in just a few long steps. He scrawled something on a notepad, then held it up. “This is their patch.”

He’d drawn a crude image of a skull with a snake looping through it. It was the same symbol Harry had seen sewn onto the jacket Sirius wore.

“Oh,” said Harry. _Oh, fuck_.

Hagrid dropped the notepad back onto the bench and tossed the pen after it a little too forcefully; it bounced off and landed on the floor. “Right.”

* * *

Harry thought of calling Sirius a dozen times over the next week. 

He knew that staying fixated on Sirius was stupid, and he would probably have gotten over it if this new wrinkle hadn’t been introduced. Was Torres one of those guys he’d seen at the bar? The idea that he’d been so close to someone who would, days later, try to silence a cop...a cop who was _Harry’s dad_...

The questions Harry imagined asking had less to do with touching base with Sirius than sorting out his own thoughts. 

_Are you okay?_

_I heard about Jason Torres. Are you okay?_

_You didn’t have anything to do with it right?_

_You didn’t hurt my dad?_

_Right?_

His sleeping pattern didn’t improve.

* * *

It happened on Wednesday. Harry was the last one to leave the shop. He had finished putting away the tools and was sorting out the keys when he heard motorcycle engines. The sound didn’t strike him the way it always had before. Now he froze, hoping he’d hear the noise swell then fade as they passed on the street. Instead it got increasingly louder, the garage door practically vibrating with it, and cut as one.

Harry remembered reading once that you could weaponize your keys, arranging them all between your knuckles, but he was still staring down at the keyring in frozen panic when the door banged open and four men in leather shouldered in.

Two of them were familiar, from the bar on graduation night. The third was not, but he was clearly running the show. The other two held back at the door as he came forward, pulling a gun from his waistband and pointing it at Harry. He did it almost casually, the way someone else might point a finger. He had gunmetal-grey hair cropped short and a tidy beard that was darker, a stark black. His eyes were light brown under thick black eyebrows.

“This can be hard, or it can be easy,” he said to Harry in a voice that sounded like gravel in a bucket. Harry, lacking any other inspiration, threw the entire key ring at his face as hard as he could and sprinted for the office, meanwhile trying to fish in his jeans pocket.

He got halfway there before one of the men by the door shook themselves and crossed the short distance to intercept him. Harry finally closed his fingers over what he’d been rummaging in his inconveniently tight hip pocket for. He yanked out the little canister of pepper spray and fired it straight into the guy’s face.

When he howled and fell back, the second one who’d been watching the door started forward, and Harry managed to feint and dodge him. His hand had closed over the knob when a large, calloused hand caught him by the bicep and wrenched him back.

“It’s like I said, kid,” panted the big grey-haired man while he seized Harry’s other arm and shook him so hard his teeth knocked together and he dropped the pepper spray at once. It rolled harmlessly across the concrete with a tinny sound. “It could have been easy.” 

His knee came up hard in Harry’s stomach, and just like that Harry couldn’t breathe or resist. He was slung, gasping uselessly, over the guy’s shoulder and carried straight out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the cliffhanger but everything will be alright. I'm not here to hurt you! 
> 
> I'd love to hear your thoughts and theories. <3 And as I travel further in my Sirry obsession I've started [another long fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19424056/chapters/46226386) I hope you'll check out. That one will enjoy a quicker update schedule at least at first since I've written the first five chapter already.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings in end note!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Miraculous for the beta! This one fought me hard. Hope it turned out ok ❤️
> 
> Check the end note for trigger warnings if you think you may need them.

1992

When Harry was twelve, he overheard a conversation between his parents.

He’d been coming down the back staircase and they were in the kitchen, one thin wall away. He froze in the stairwell just as his father said, “...I don’t know what to do, Lil.”

Their voices were lowered, which signaled immediately to Harry that he was intruding, and also captivated him despite himself. He wasn’t a nosy person, but like anyone, he felt the strange allure of even a sudden mystery.

“I don’t know what you  _ can _ do,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry, honey.”

Harry wasn’t sure he’d ever heard his father sound so forlorn. James had the kind of sunny temperament that toed the line between charming and grating, like a perpetually friendly dog. “I can’t visit him if he won’t let me,” he agreed. “What I can’t believe,” he added, scathingly, “is that they’d parole  _ him _ before Remus. Anyone who glanced at the facts in that case knew — “

“I know,” Lily cut in. “But he’s a Black, and Remus is just Remus.”

“But he’s been cut off,” James said, sounding startled. “Walburga disavowed him. I don’t think the family is working for or against him now.”   
  
“You didn’t hear?” Lily’s voice was somber. “Walburga Black’s dead. And I guess due to some technicality, he got everything.”

“How do you know this?” James said, voice hollow with shock and slightly hoarse as though he was struggling not to shout. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I assumed you knew! You’re so —  _ obsessed _ with —” 

“I’m not obsessed! I’m...it’s the injustice of it that I...after all his talk, his denials, they patched him his first month inside. I could just...I could  _ kill  _ him, Lily. He belongs there, but Remus doesn’t! It’s not right.”

“I know,” Lily said wearily. “I know that’s what you think.”

 

<hr>

 

1998

Harry was carried outside and shoved in the backseat of a car. There, a man he didn’t get a good look at bound his hands behind his back with a zip tie. Harry could tell that’s what it was from the noise it made as it was cinched tight and the way it bit into his wrists. 

He managed to take a deep enough breath to wheeze, “No!” But he couldn’t do much more to fight than squirm.

The big man shoved Harry across the seats so his legs were folded against the passenger side door, and someone else slid in and wrapped a cloth around his head and between his teeth, knotting it tightly — a gag. He couldn’t see the newcomer well but his hands were square and callused. He smacked Harry across the temple so hard his vision swam.

“Stay still.”

Harry let his head loll against the seat while he blinked the fuzziness from his vision. He breathed through his nose, remembering how his father had said  _ the chances of survival plummet if a victim is moved. _

He pulled up his knees and kicked the door as hard as he could, and by some miracle, it sprang open. The man who was sitting near Harry’s head said, “Fuck!” and took a handful of Harry’s hair, but Harry had already shoved himself as hard as he could with his hands and dug his heel into the edge of the seat, effectively throwing himself out the open door, where he almost fell face-first onto the pavement. He managed to twist his upper body and land on his shoulder instead. A blaze of pain lit in his arm, but he ignored it, scrambling to his feet and running as fast as he could with his arms behind his back. As it turned out, that wasn’t fast enough.

One of the men straddling a bike let it fall to the pavement and caught Harry by one elbow, which pulled his wrist against the zip tie with a sharp cutting pain. Blood ran into Harry’s palm at once and he stumbled, off balance. That was enough time for the big man to join the one who’d grabbed Harry. He seized Harry by the shoulders and gave him a grim look before pulling his arm back and punching Harry right in the cheek.

This time the car door was locked by the time Harry’s feet were tucked against it.

They drove. Harry breathed hard against the gag. Blood was streaming from his wrist. It was alarming, leaving him light-headed. 

“You’re ruining my fucking seats,” said one of the men, and a couple of the others laughed.

“He’s not supposed to be dead on arrival,” one of them pointed out, sounding vaguely uncomfortable.

“That’s not the kind of wound that’s gonna kill him,” muttered the big man, whose hand gripped Harry’s shoulder so tightly Harry knew it would be barred with bruises from his thick fingers. 

Harry was losing consciousness. It felt like being pulled underwater, but he was too groggy to panic. A bad sign, probably; he’d been hit in the head, hard, and it must have given him a concussion. Hopefully only a concussion. 

He couldn’t die like this. It would break his mother’s heart and destroy his father. He wasn’t...he couldn’t —

 

<hr>

 

Harry came to with a start. His chin had been resting on his chest, and when he jerked his head up he felt the abused muscles in his neck pull and whine in protest. He was sitting upright, tied to a chair. One of his eyes was so swollen he couldn’t see out of it and his vision was iffy in the other eye. Not good. But at least from the sticky, tacky feeling of his hand, his wrist wasn’t bleeding anymore.

The room was dim. It looked like it was used for storage, as it was stacked with boxes, random pieces of seasonal decor, and equipment Harry didn’t recognize. The men from the shop were there, minus one. And leaning against a door beside a teetering stack of boxes, looking totally uninterested in his surroundings, was Sirius Black.

Harry’s fuzzy thoughts churned with even deeper confusion. What was Sirius doing here? Had he been behind it? He must not care very much about what had happened, anyway. Sirius certainly wasn’t trying to help Harry, or even asking how he was. Instead he was fumbling with a cigarette lighter and looking merely bored.

“Ah, look here,” said one of the men. “Sleeping beauty is awake.”

  
Sirius turned his head in Harry’s direction, then paused, not quite looking at him. If Harry had any hope Sirius was going to help him, it sputtered and died in that moment. He let his chin rest on his chest again to ease the strain in his neck, and also to give himself a moment to think.

Maybe he was a hostage. Maybe they were going to contact Harry’s parents and demand a payment. Maybe they just wanted to scare him, or his dad. But Harry had the slowly-welling thought, drowning out all the rest:  _ if they planned to let me go, they wouldn’t have let me see their faces. _

“What was it Torres wanted? A vid, or photographs?” Confusingly, Harry heard the rattle of a belt buckle.   
  
“Goddamn, Ed, you’re eager for it. Girlfriend been holding out on you?”

Harry lifted his head. The big guy from the backseat of the car had pulled his belt out of its loops and tossed it aside, and now he was fingering the button of his fly while looking at Harry assessingly.   
  
Oh, God. No. Harry looked imploringly toward Sirius, then wished he hadn’t. Sirius was back to fussing with his lighter, but had one eye on Ed and had clearly noticed what he was preparing for. He didn’t say anything.   
  
“And you want all of us to stand around and watch?” complained the younger one. “I don’t want to see your hairy balls, Ed.”   
  
Everyone laughed, except Sirius, whom Harry couldn’t look away from. The fact Sirius didn’t react flared that stubborn hope, but then — 

“He wanted a vid,” Sirius said matter-of-factly. “And you’ll have to close your eyes, then, Vince, because he also said he wanted to see him take two.”   
  
“What?” the young one, Vince, complained. “I don’t — that’s, no offense, Sirius, but — “   
  
“Oh, you’re not offending me,” Sirius said coolly.

Harry put his head back down, trying to brace himself for what was coming. He could only feel a cold horror spreading through his body, but he thought it might be easier for whomever saw the video if he could keep from crying and begging. He could do that, probably. The numbness was advancing to his fingertips and his head was foggy. He might not have to try very hard. He might pass out as soon as they started.   
  
“But couldn’t you…?” Vince asked, pleading. Sirius snorted.

“I can’t get hard in the presence of Ed. It’s a physical impossibility.”

“You’re such a smart-mouthed piece of shit, Black. Torres will have someone come slice off your cock if we don’t deliver. That inspire you?”

  
“Nah, that doesn’t do it for me either, sorry.”   
  
“It’ll be Bo, then. You good, Bo?”   
  
“Sure,” said the last man dubiously. “Never done it before.”   
  
“You can take his mouth then.”   
  
Bo made a gruff noise of protest. “He’ll bite!”   
  
“Go get that sack of stuff from my nightstand, Vince. Got a bite guard, I think.”   
  
“You want me to  _ touch _ …”   
  
“Go, goddamn it.”   
  
The door opened and closed. Vince was gone.

 

“What about a rubber?” Sirius asked. “You don’t know where he’s been,” he added practically.

 

“I hate those goddamn things,” Ed grumbled, then sighed. “But yeah, maybe Bo should wear one too. The DNA and shit.”   
  
Harry closed his eyes.

 

“I got a couple in my truck,” Bo said. The door opened and closed again.   
  
“You gonna hold the camera, Black?”   
  
“It would be an honor. Need a smoke first, to brace myself.”

 

“Right, asshole.”   
  
“I’m out. You got a spare?”   
  
“Sure.” 

 

Harry wasn’t really paying attention at this point, but he was aware of them moving around the room, thinking dully that there was no way he was going to get through this with any of his dignity. It made him angry, to lack any control, to know —

 

There was a loud noise, like a massive slap, and something struck Harry’s foot and the leg of his chair, almost toppling it. He blinked down in shock. What had hit him was Ed’s body. Or more specifically, Ed’s head. His eyes were sightless and wide; his neck had been opened in one giant slice. Blood gushed like it was coming from a hydrant.   
  
Harry felt pressure on the zip tie, and then it was gone. He felt something pulling at his hair as the gag was untied. Then Sirius’ face was in front of his, pale and desperate.

 

“Harry, you’ve gotta go. You’ve gotta run. Can you run?”   
  


Harry gaped at him, his thoughts slow-moving and disassembled. Sirius grimaced.

 

“Okay, okay,” he said, and Harry wasn’t sure whether he was speaking to Harry or himself. He ran his hands through Harry’s hair, smoothing it, half-rubbing. “Come on, kid. You’ve gotta get it together. I know you’re hurt, but you’ve got to get it together.”

 

Harry nodded, blinking rapidly a few times. His mouth was dry and his jaw ached, so his voice was strained almost to unintelligibility when he said, “Yeah, okay. I can run.”   
  
Sirius gave his neck a soft squeeze. “That’s right. Of course you can. You’re gonna run straight away from here. Do you know how to use this?” He was holding a gun in front of Harry. It was a standard sort of handgun. Harry had never taken an interest. But his dad had made him learn to shoot, so he nodded and took the gun from Sirius, handle first. Sirius smiled faintly when he saw Harry check the safety.

 

“Let’s get you up. Watch your step.” Sirius held Harry by the elbows as he stood. His knees threatened to buckle, but Harry managed to stay on his feet, reaching out with one hand to balance against Sirius. He almost slipped in what looked like an ocean of blood under their feet.

 

“Don’t look,” Sirius snapped as Harry’s gaze drifted helplessly back toward Ed’s open throat. “Come on. There’s only one way out of here. I’m going to take you to the back door, and I’ll take care of the rest of them. You need to go down the alley, left two blocks. When you get to the big road, there’ll be a phone booth on the corner. Use this and call home. If they don’t answer, call 911. Tell them you’re at 9th and Tucson. Okay?”

 

Harry nodded, feeling Sirius shove a handful of rattling change in his pocket.   
  
“All right. This is gonna be fine. You’re gonna be fine.” He took Harry’s hand and led him toward the door, just as someone tried the handle and found it locked.

 

“Guys?” Vince’s voice, muffled. “Got Ed’s disgusting fucking bag.”   
  
“Fuck,” Sirius said under his breath, then arranged Harry away from the door and took the gun from him. “Okay. Okay.” He took the safety off, swung the door open, and Harry turned away just as he aimed.

 

“Sirius — what the — ?”   
  
A shot, another slap of a body, then Bo’s startled voice —

 

“Black, I knew it, you dirty goddamn — Torres’ll find you, have no doubt — ”

 

A shot. This time a series of thuds, a second shot, and only then silence.

 

Harry had turned with his arms up around his head, his body pressed hard into the shelving in the corner of the room, and he actually whimpered when he felt someone touch his raised forearms.   
  
“It’s me,” Sirius said quietly. “It’s okay. They’re all — no one’s gonna hurt you, kid. Come on, come on now. We’ve gotta get out of here. We’ll go together, okay?”   
  
Harry felt, through the pervasive numbness, the pressure of Sirius’ arm on his bruised shoulder. The strange dull pain woke him up enough to stumble along, tucked into Sirius’ side, through all the slipperiness that had to be blood. But he kept his eyes tightly closed so he wouldn’t have to know for sure.

Sirius put him on the bike in front of him, tangled their legs up so Harry could reach the pegs, and locked an arm around him. Harry wondered if he could even manage the bike like that, but it was a distant thought. He couldn’t bring himself to worry. If they were flung off the edge of the road into a flaming wreck, it might not even hurt. It sounded somehow cleansing in the space of Harry’s head, which was only half-functioning between the physical and emotional shocks of the day. The two of them burning out, like a star.

 

<hr>

 

Harry woke up in a bed under a scratchy quilt. His head hurt, his arm hurt, he — well, he hurt almost everywhere — and Sirius was asleep, leaning on his folded arms, in a chair drawn up to the foot of the bed.   
  


They were in some sort of one-room cabin. Everything was outdated and spartan, reminding Harry of a fishing trip he’d once gone on with his father to a family friend’s place, which had clearly not had a decorative touch in decades. There were brown vinyl tiles on the floor, peeling here and there; a folding card table and chairs, an overturned wastebasket for a nightstand and holes in the lampshade. A moth-eaten, lacy curtain framed the window across from the bed. Outside it Harry saw green trees, a gravel driveway half-overgrown, and the motorcycle leaning on its kickstand. Everything was quiet.

Harry bent his knee, and just the slight motion had Sirius startling awake, blinking at Harry with a sleepy frown. 

“Hi,” Harry said quietly. His face, like everything else, hurt, and his throat was raw.

Sirius slowly sat up. He looked at Harry’s swollen eye and winced, averting his gaze. “Do you want some water? I don’t have anything good, but there’s a dusty bottle of Advil, if you want to risk it.”   
  
“Water,” Harry said. He watched Sirius get out of the chair and go to the kitchenette to fill a glass. He took advantage of this scrap of privacy to test the range of motion in each of his arms and bend and straighten each of his legs. There was some pain, but nothing too alarming. He was looking at his wrist when Sirius came back with a jelly jar half full of tepid water.

“I tried to clean it up,” Sirius murmured, meaning Harry’s wrist. “It’s not — as bad as it looked,” he swallowed, holding the glass toward Harry while avoiding eye contact. Harry took it, and drank the contents in three long swallows. When it was empty, he held it awkwardly in his lap and looked at Sirius’ bent head. His thoughts felt a little clearer. He should probably ask for more water, but he knew Sirius was struggling with something, and wanted to give him enough time to put it together.

“I’m so sorry, kid,” he said at last, so softly, and in one long exhale. 

That wasn’t really what Harry had expected. “You did tell me to get another job,” he said, but even to him the joke wasn’t funny. Sirius looked up at him, one hand on the side of his face, pained.

“I didn’t tell you shit,” he mumbled. “That’s...that’s why all of this happened.” He swallowed. “Fuck, I’m a piece of shit.”

That’s what one of the others had called him, back in the storage room, and hearing it made Harry’s head spin. Sirius noticed and looked alarmed.

“More water? Or do you — a hospital?” He made this last offer cautiously.

“I’m okay,” Harry said quietly. “Just...remembering.”

Sirius’ face settled back into miserable lines. “Yeah. I wouldn’t have let them.”   
  
“You didn’t let them,” Harry reminded him. He thought about the three dead bodies they’d left behind them and tried to care. He hated himself for it, but all he felt was relief that people who were willing to kill someone like him on an order — and, before that, to — well, he was just glad they were gone. He knew it was wrong, but he’d chide himself for it when he had more energy. Maybe ten or fifteen years from now.

“You…” Sirius looked haunted. “You shouldn’t have seen all that. I didn’t want you to.” He put his head back down and groaned. “I’ve fucked you up.”

Harry felt vaguely offended and wasn’t sure why. “I’m fine.”   
  
Sirius didn’t look up, just groaned again. “I promise I’ll get you back home. Just as soon as Torres is taken care of.”   
  
“Taken care of?” Harry echoed, but before he could get an answer, he heard tires on gravel and his heart leapt into his throat.

Sirius put his hand on Harry’s leg, over the quilt. “Hey, easy,” he murmured, glancing out the window as he rose from his chair. “It’s just McGonagall.”   
  
Harry looked, panicked, at the sedan in the driveway. “ _ Minerva  _ McGonagall?” he managed in a strangled voice. But he had his answer at the sight of the familiar, older woman climbing out of the car. She was easy to recognize even in plain clothes by her signature grey-streaked bun and angular face.  “What’s my dad’s partner doing here?”

“She’s my handler,” Sirius said grimly, as though that was an answer. He started toward the door, looking at Harry cautiously. “It’s fine, kid. I promise.”   
  
Harry pulled the quilt up to his chin, feeling bizarrely exposed, but nodded and watched, knees drawn up in further defense, as Sirius opened the door. Minerva was just coming up the steps onto a small wooden porch.

“How is he?”    
  
“He’s okay,” Sirius began, but Minerva was already pushing past him and heading straight for Harry’s bedside.

She grimaced at the sight of him, and reached out a tentative hand to touch his arm. “Oh, Harry. Look at you.”   
  
“I’m okay,” he protested, but didn’t stop her when she lifted her hand to gently touch his swollen cheek. Her fingers were cool, faintly soothing.    
  
“I’ve got a few things for you.” She pulled a bottle of pills from her pocket, and a roll of adhesive gauze. Harry stayed still while she dispensed pills — Advil, thought the bottle wasn’t dusty — and dabbed something cold and gel-like onto the split skin above his eyebrow.

“This won’t scar, I don’t think,” she murmured.   
  
“Minerva,” Harry said quietly, trying to look at her in the eye, but her wrist kept getting in the way. “What...what the hell is going on, please?”   
  
She froze, looking shocked, then turned at the waist toward Sirius. “You haven’t told him?”   
  
“He’s been conscious for about five minutes,” Sirius said testily. He was standing all the way across the room, near the sink, with his arms crossed defensively.   
  
“Just when I think you’ve matured, Black,” she muttered, turning back toward Harry. The scowl she’d had on for Sirius transitioned to a concerned frown for Harry. “Sirius is an informant for the FBI, Harry, and I’m his handler.”   
  
Harry stared at her. “Wh-what?”   
  
“Yes. Sirius has been embedded since he was paroled, a couple years ago. He is, generally, much more trouble than he’s worth as an asset.”

“Hey,” Sirius objected.

“And,” Minerva continued, as though she hadn’t heard him, “he saved your dad’s life the other day, and yours just now, so I suppose he’s finally made good on the arrangement. Do you feel any cramping?”   
  
Harry, stunned by the revelation, took a moment to process the question that had so closely followed. “Cramping? No.”   
  
“Mobility issues?” He shook his head. “Dizziness?”   
  
“Not anymore. I did before.”

She touched his temple, feather-light. “Well, that’s to be expected. We’ll get you fully checked out just as soon as it’s safe to move you. But while the hit is still out — it’s better you stay here. But if his condition changes,” she began in tones of threat, turning back toward Sirius.

He nodded. “Of course, yeah. I’ll let you know, or I’ll get him to a hospital.”   
  
“Monitor him closely,” Minerva said, frowning grimly. “If I could, Harry, I’d stay here with you. But…”   
  
“I get it,” Harry said. “That Torres guy has people looking for me.”   
  
“Yes. And he’s much better-connected than we could have predicted.” She set the bottle of pills on the nightstand, seeming to notice with a brief moment of dismay, as Harry had, that it was a repurposed wastebasket. Then she blinked and carried on. “I hope these accommodations are...adequate. I have a bit of food I’ll leave for the two of you.”

“Do my parents know I’m okay?”   
  
Her expression softened slightly. “Yes. And I’ll tell them I’ve seen for myself, as well.”   
  
Harry relaxed a little bit against the thin pillows. “Thanks, Minerva.”   
  
She squeezed his knee. “You bet.” She gave him a long, conflicted look, then sighed and stood up. “Okay. I have to go. Be careful, you two.” And out she went.

The door closed behind her and Harry watched her walk to the car. She gave the cabin a long, lingering look before she finally got inside, started the engine and drove off. 

He could organize his shocks into two basic categories:

First, he now knew the way that blood smelled in large quantities and how quickly someone could go from alive to dead. He knew what pure, undiluted fear tasted like. Someone had called out a hit on him, and there were people out there still looking for him to make good on it.

Second, Sirius wasn’t who Harry had thought he was. He wasn’t sure whether he was relieved. Of course it was good that Sirius wasn’t the person Harry had mistaken him for when he first woke up in the storage room. But he just wanted the simplicity of that first night back, and it felt really far away now.

Outside the window, darkness was setting in. It had to be well after nine. Out of his right ear he heard the crinkling of the paper sack Minerva had brought, and when he turned his head he saw Sirius was rummaging in it, drawing out a loaf of bread and jars of peanut butter and jelly.

  
“Hungry?” Sirius asked, frowning at the label on the peanut butter. “Although I have to warn you, everything’s generic.” 

Harry barely heard him. “That morning I saw you at the shop, Frank said something. About me breaking my father’s heart.”   
  
Sirius went very still, except that he slowly lowered the jar of peanut butter back to the counter. Then he visibly drew in a breath, his shoulders tightening and his nostrils flaring. “Did he?”   
  
Harry nodded. “I remember hearing my parents talk about you. I didn’t know your name, then, or anything about you, but…” It was all coming together, and instead of an additional shock, it felt — like a relief, somehow, for pieces of the situation that had been incongruent to be made to fit together. But it wasn’t quite a complete picture, yet. There was still something missing. 

Sirius was watching him cautiously, his hands pressed against the countertop.

“So you were his friend,” Harry managed at last. “My dad’s friend.”   
  
“A lifetime ago,” Sirius said quietly. “Yeah. I was his best friend.”

_ Oh _ . There it was, the final piece of the mystery.

“His best friend,” Harry said, his voice tight. “Until you had a falling out. Over a prank.

Sirius narrowed his eyes. “That’s right.”   
  
“My mom mentioned it, years ago. But she didn’t use any names.” Harry rubbed his arms and shrugged. “I guess I should have asked for more details, huh?” He forced a smile.

Sirius rocked back and forth against his braced arms, looking down. “Is that what you want? Details?”   
  
Harry nodded, then realized Sirius wasn’t looking at him, and cleared his throat. “Yeah. I guess so. I mean…”  _ You owe me that _ wasn’t something he could quite get out, but it didn’t matter. It seemed to go without saying.

Sirius was silent for a few long moments. Then he began in a low, determined voice. “After your mom got pregnant, James kept his distance. Smart. She’d been wanting that since they got together and I guess the, ah, circumstances, finally convinced him. So it was just me and Remus and Peter, and without James, everything got more intense, fast. He and Remus had always been the voice of reason, but without James there Remus got outvoted too often. 

“There was this kid I really hated, and while I had pretty good reasons, it didn’t justify the torment I cooked up for him. I think I took a lot of my frustration over the distance with James out on him. And then, I took a lot of my frustration over some shit with my younger brother out on him, too. I wanted to scare him, as badly as I could, because he was so infuriatingly hard to rattle. 

“He had this real shit car, because he wasn’t like me, a spoiled rich kid, or even your dad, a not-so-spoiled rich kid. He was just from a regular family, and the bucket he got he’d saved up for. It couldn’t top fifty miles an hour, I was pretty sure. So one day I decided I’d follow him home, a little too close. Making him push the pedal harder and harder, but there was no way he could outrace me.

“Remus was there, telling me to stop, except when we took a turn too fast and all three of us came pretty close to getting killed, no one believed Remus hadn’t been in on it. So they arrested us both. It was just going to be reckless driving at first, but...they wanted to collar a Black. And Remus was easy to steamroll. We got charged with attempted murder and when it was all said and done they gave us twenty-five years a piece, possibility of parole after fifteen. But that wasn’t until after a drawn-out trial and sentencing. We were eighteen before we started accruing time, so we never saw a juvenile facility. And they sent Remus to the pen up north, and me down south. I haven’t seen him since.”   
  
Sirius cleared his throat, swallowed and went on. “And when they put me in, all the family soldiers were there waiting for me. I thought they might slit my throat. That seemed like what my mother would want. But instead, they closed ranks. Patched me in even while I was calling them motherfuckers every chance I got.

“If I’d known earlier they needed a double agent, I would have jumped on it, but the opportunity took some time to come up. You should have seen the looks on their faces when they called me in to pitch the deal, and I jumped on it before they could even get the whole thing out of their mouths. Well, more or less. I negotiated some adjustments to the terms.” He gave another quick, pained smile. 

“So they let me out, pretending it was parole. And the deal was that I would help them with a sting to get a few Death Eater higher-ups, and if I did, I’d get what I wanted.”   
  
“Paroled for real? Or your sentence, um, commuted?”

Sirius hesitated, then nodded. “Among other things.”   
  
“So you did it, then,” Harry said. “You helped them get Jason Torres?”   
  
Sirius sighed. “Yeah. Not before your dad got a little banged up. That was — I didn’t want that. I may not be on the best terms with the guy, but I wouldn’t hurt him.” He blinked and laughed. “Well, that’s not true. When I saw you, that was my first thought.”   
  
Harry felt like he’d been slapped. And that was saying something, now that he knew what a slap really felt like. “Oh?”   
  
“Yeah.” Sirius’ eyes were bright. “I knew who you were in an instant. You look a lot like him. Or you did, at first. And I…” He pulled a face, then ran his hands through his hair. “I’m not proud of any of that. In fact I’m pretty fucking ashamed of it.”

Actually, Harry felt like he’d been kicked. Repeatedly. He wasn’t sure he could speak.

“I didn’t realize your dad was involved in the case. Or that anyone at the clubhouse would know you were a cop’s kid. But…” he grimaced… “it was still reckless, taking you there. It’s a dangerous place, and we…” He glanced up at Harry, looking miserable. “ _ I  _ made us hard to ignore.”

He meant what happened outside, Harry thought, and a rush of sense memory hit him. The gritty brick against his shoulderblades, and then, when Sirius turned him around, rough under his palms. The unforgettable feeling of Sirius pressed up tight against his ass, of being locked between Sirius’ hips and his hand.

“Kid, are you okay?” Sirius was looking at him anxiously, and Harry realized he’d been staring blankly at Sirius’ left hand for several seconds. He blinked, met Sirius’ worried gaze and breathed out hard through his nose.

“Yeah, I’m okay. But this is…”

“A lot.” Sirius grimaced. “I’m worthless and you hate me, I’m well-aware of that. And you’ll never have to see me again, as soon as we know it’s safe to leave here I’ll get you home.”   
  
Harry shook his head automatically. “You’re not worthless,” he said firmly.

Sirius looked genuinely shocked. “After everything I just said, you can honestly tell me that with a straight face?”   
  
“You were in prison a long time for the wrong reasons. And then you still helped the police catch people, even though it was dangerous. That’s brave.”   
  
“No, it’s self-serving. I did it because of the deal.”   
  
“No one would do it without a deal,” Harry said, rolling his eyes. “Real martyrs are only in stories.”

“Jesus was a martyr,” Sirius said faintly, looking at Harry with his brow creased, as though disbelieving.

“Jesus was a story,” Harry said firmly. “And even if he wasn’t, that’s a pretty lofty standard you’re holding yourself to.”   
  
Sirius laughed, still studying Harry intently. “You’re something else, kid.”   
  
“Yeah,” Harry breathed, looking away. “Sure.”   
  
“No,” Sirius said immediately. He was pulling away from the counter, starting across the room with slow steps. “You are. You’re amazing. I realized that right away. Your dad was a good person, more or less, and your mom was too. But you…”   


Harry felt a thrill of nerves. His instinct was to think Sirius was just trying to flatter him, but then,  _ why _ ? Also, it didn’t really seem like Sirius’ style.

“I figured you just wanted to fuck with my dad,” he muttered.

Sirius raised his eyebrows. “No. No, no. I mean, well,  _ yes _ , but that was only the first five minutes of it. Okay, twenty minutes, tops.”

Harry was skeptical, and didn’t try to hide it.

Sirius sighed. He’d reached the chair at the foot of the bed and dropped into it. He was dirty with the grit of the road from the bike. His hair was scraped up into a tangled half-bun and snarled where it was loose. He was as stupidly hot as ever, more vivid than any of Harry’s fantasies since the night they’d met. It was hard to look at him, and also Harry couldn’t look anywhere else. 

“Yeah,” Sirius sighed at last, after Harry had almost forgotten what they were talking about. “It did...it did add to it, to think of how pissed off your dad would be. But that was — that was practically nothing compared to just, the way you are.” His look softened. “You’re a rarity, kid. You practically radiate goodness, like a warmth. A light. And I’ve been…” he laughed grimly. “Well, let’s just say I’ve spent most of my life in the dark and the cold. I couldn’t resist someone like you, even if I tried. And I didn’t try.” Now his grin was a little purer, less shadowed. “I’ve never been good with impulse control.”   
  
Harry found himself smiling back, if tentatively. An almost intolerable restlessness was filling him, and he thought he might be slightly hard, too. No one had ever talked about him this way, and he was starting to see what Sirius meant, about it not being  _ not _ about Harry’s dad, not entirely. Because now Harry felt it, too, the way the  _ wrongness _ of the situation, which should have dampened his enthusiasm, somehow only spurred it on.

“I’ve never met anyone like you,” Harry said quietly. “I’ve never…” God, the words were disgusting, why was he saying them? But he couldn’t stop. “I’ve never felt the way I...you...made me feel.” He swallowed. “I really don’t want you to regret any of it. I don’t.”

Sirius held his elbow in one hand and cupped his chin in the other, his long fingers covering most of his mouth. He looked at Harry, and Harry looked back, refusing to blush or look down. He meant it, and the strange and powerful bravery that came over him on occasion was rushing through his veins now, giving him courage.

“I don’t either,” Sirius said at last. 

The bed wasn’t large, but Sirius seemed too far away. Harry started to lean forward, then winced and sat back. He held out his hand. “Could you…?”   
  
Sirius hesitated, then slowly shifted out of the chair, taking a few steps so he stood within arm’s reach. He took Harry’s hand. His fingers were strong and smooth, the way Harry remembered from that night. While Sirius looked down at their tangled fingers, Harry tried to keep his heart from hammering out of control, and tugged on their joined hands, drawing Sirius closer.

Sirius hesitated, then let himself be led, sitting half-perched beside Harry, his right hip just a few inches from Harry’s, their shoulders close. He could hear Sirius breathing, hitched despite his outward calm. The idea that he could be affected like Harry was — it was a heady thought.

“This is not a good idea,” Sirius said quietly, whether to himself or Harry, it was unclear. Then he turned, leaning so that their faces lined up. He cupped Harry’s chin in the palm of his hand and kissed him.

It was soft at first, questioning. But Harry was eager and found himself grasping Sirius’ waist, then his hair, then urging his mouth open and panting when Sirius’ tongue brushed his lip.

Sirius leaned back, but only enough to look Harry in the eye. Harry had never seen eyes the color of Sirius’, too gunmetal-grey to ever be called blue. Sirius searched his face for a long moment, then slid the hand on Harry’s face behind his neck and pulled Harry’s face toward his shoulder. Their hands had come apart, which left Harry free to wind his arms around Sirius. Somehow he’d wound up half in Sirius’ lap, and he wanted to stay there permanently.

“What’s going to happen?” Harry murmured, fascinated by the softness of Sirius’ hair against his cheek. 

“When we know it’s safe, I’ll take you home,” Sirius said, stroking Harry’s back. He was basically repeating what he’d said earlier, but Harry, though frustrated, sensed definitively that he wasn’t going to get a more detailed answer.

“And you? Do you have to go back to the Death Eaters? Will that...”   
  
Sirius snorted. He rubbed a gentle circle on Harry’s nape. “No. I think my cover is entirely blown. That’s over.”   
  
“But did you help enough?” Harry lifted his head and looked at Sirius anxiously. “Will they give you the deal?”   
  
Sirius nodded. “I think so.”   
  
Harry’s shoulders slumped. “Oh. Good.”   
  
Sirius continued to stroke Harry’s back, his head tipped back, looking at him. He didn’t smile.

“It’s all going to be all right,” he said quietly. And again, oddly, Harry had the thought he wasn’t reassuring Harry, but that he was really talking to himself.

Harry might have been able to mull that over more if he hadn’t just been dragged through the longest day of his life. Instead, all he could think about was a sudden, overpowering drowsiness. Sirius seemed to notice. He smiled and pulled Harry’s arms off of him, urging him to lean back.

“Sleep.”   
  
Harry twisted free and grasped Sirius by the wrists. “Only if you don’t go.”   
  
Sirius sighed through his nose. “Okay. Budge over.” For an awkward, undignified moment, Harry was trying to scoot over without getting impossibly tangled in the quilt, wondering if the bed was actually big enough for two grown men, while Sirius positioned himself on the outermost edge of the bed like it was a balance beam. But then they figured it out. Sirius’ arm went under Harry’s head so he could nestle against Sirius’ shoulder, and Harry’s knee slipped between Sirius’, and Sirius rested his other hand on Harry’s hip.

“Okay?” Sirius murmured against the crown of Harry’s head.

“Yeah,” Harry breathed, almost asleep already. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Physical violence and discussion/threat of rape. Peripheral character deaths (x3).


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fermion Cat's invaluable help made this chapter the best it could be and also ensured it contained 15% fewer commas.

Harry woke first. He and Sirius had fallen asleep facing each other. Harry’s face was pressed into Sirius’ chest, Harry’s shoulder was swollen and sore, and Sirius apparently snored. The noises were very faint, just a slightly heavier-than-normal inhale, but they made Harry smile irrepressibly.

That’s how Harry realized Sirius was awake a moment later. His breathing went mostly-silent just before a warm hand skimmed down Harry’s back. 

“Good morning,” Sirius said against Harry’s hair. 

“Good morning,” Harry replied, turning his head so he could gauge the light in the room. It was still weak: probably just past dawn. Sirius’ heartbeat was detectable under his cheek, slow and measured. 

Harry’s back was to the window but he heard the popping noise of gravel under tires, pulling him out of a moment he hadn’t had a chance to fully appreciate while only half-awake. “Looks like we woke up just in time,” Sirius said, lifting himself up on his elbow to peer out the window. His hand went still on Harry’s lower back, his little finger curved just under the hem of Harry’s t-shirt where it had ridden up. “Minerva’s back to get you.” 

He dropped back down beside Harry and pressed their chests together, sliding down so their faces lined up. He cupped Harry’s cheek, his thumb grazing Harry’s lower lip. His eyes had silver flecks in the irises, which was what made them seem grey instead of stormy blue from a distance. Up close they looked unreal, striated like one of those tumbled gemstones veined with color. 

“This is it?” Harry asked quietly. Minerva could walk in on them in bed together. Harry flinched at the thought, even if they were fully clothed and on top of the covers. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to move. And he knew Minerva, anyway; she’d knock. 

“For now,” Sirius said with an easy smile. Then a shadow crossed his face, which was suddenly solemn. He looked down so that his eyelashes lay in the thumbprint-shaped bruises under his eyes. The thought of him being tired or under any strain made Harry’s heart thud with the helpless urge to soothe, to cure. “If…” Sirius began, turning his head so that his breath ghosted Harry’s jaw. “If you want, we…” 

But he didn’t finish the sentence. The door flung open and bounced off the frame with a bang. No knock. Which was Harry’s first clue that it wasn’t actually Minerva who had come to collect Harry. 

_Of course,_ he thought nonsensically as he looked over Sirius’ shoulder in perfect shock. The person in the doorway was his _dad_. 

Harry knew his father was tough when it counted. He was in law enforcement, after all, and he’d recently laughed off a kidnapping where he’d been injured and only rescued out of dumb luck. His father was a badass. But he was also inordinately ticklish, he winced when he had to walk barefoot on gravel, and Harry had once hurt his feelings so deeply when he’d forgotten his birthday for a day and a half that he’d burst into tears. That was the version of James Potter with which Harry was familiar. 

The man standing across the room was not the James Potter Harry knew. Harry was riveted by the sight of him even as Sirius hastily slid out of Harry’s arms and slowly, cautiously arranged himself in a seated position on the edge of the bed. _This_ James Potter was like the human incarnation of a volcano moments away from implosion. His face was growing redder by the second, his eyes were narrow and opaque behind his glasses, and he seemed to have grown three inches. His hands were in fists and the right was twitching like he wanted to reach for the gun on his hip. 

“Dad,” Harry said sharply when he finally found his voice. He scrambled to sit up. “What are you...er…” He wasn’t sure what to say when his father’s attention shifted infinitesimally in his direction then away just as quickly, like Sirius was a magnet for the violent rage building up in him and he couldn’t be distracted. 

And he _did_ have a gun, so Harry’s embarrassment was quickly overcome by alarm. “Dad!” he began again, but Sirius cleared his throat to interrupt. 

“It’s all right, Harry. Your dad is just here to take you home. I’m sure he was worried. But you’re fine, aren’t you?” He was facing James with his back to Harry, and he spoke without turning. 

“ _Fine_ ,” Harry agreed with emphasis. 

“Harry,” James said at last, his soft voice incongruous with his visible rage. “Go wait in the car.” 

Harry rolled his eyes. Obviously he wasn’t going to do _that_. He sympathized with his dad, really he did. Based on what Sirius had told him, and the fact of...well, Harry being in a compromising position when James’d walked in...his father was probably coming to a very difficult realization. But Harry was an _adult_. 

“You can’t send me to the car like I’m ten years old, Dad,” he said quietly. James finally tore his gaze away from Sirius for more than a half moment, and Harry found that having all that angry energy focused directly on him was far from pleasant. 

“You,” James said with dangerous emphasis, “are eighteen years old. _He_ ,” he added, almost a snarl, “is twice your age; he’s wrecked my best friend’s life _and his own_ , and I find the two of you…” His voice faded to a sort of confused muttering as he gestured at the bed. “Cuddling! _Pardon me_ if I’m not that impressed with your _adult judgment_ , Harry!” 

Sirius’ shoulders were hunched, like each of James’ words had been a punch. 

“If he’s your age, then he’s not quite twice as old as me,” Harry pointed out weakly. His mother had him when his parents were sixteen, after all. James turned a disbelieving look on him and Harry winced. 

“Don’t be a dick to the kid, Potter,” Sirius said. “As you’re so transparently implying, he was hardly a match for my _adult_ manipulations, was he?” 

Harry and James both looked at Sirius with disbelief. But then Harry remembered the way that Sirius had put on an act before, in front of the men — the men he’d killed — back at the shop. He might be doing the same now. 

Recalling the killings was making Harry’s stomach reform into a series of painful knots, and he looked at the floor, momentarily unbalanced. 

“I’d always wondered if you’d changed, Black,” James said with quiet venom. “I should have trusted my gut. You never could.” 

Harry glanced up at Sirius, but of course he couldn’t see his face. He did see the back of his head, hair still messy from the pillows and not yet pulled up into one his half-updos. Still, the waves managed to look smooth and touchable. Sirius tilted his head to one side. 

“That’s right, Potter,” Sirius said calmly. James looked briefly startled, like he’d expected an argument. “So, I assume you’re here to do the honors?” 

Sirius stood up slowly. Harry got off the bed too, but wound up standing confused and frozen on the far side by the wall. “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

Sirius began to turn his head to look at Harry, then stopped himself and looked back at James instead. James, nostrils flared, met his son’s eye. 

“I’m arresting him,” he said simply, fishing in his hip pocket for his handcuffs. They rattled menacingly when he had them in his hand. 

“He’s on your side!” Harry all but shouted. “I know you know that; I’ve seen Minerva!” 

“If the FBI wants him back, they can come get him,” James said grimly. “But with their case at an end, I assume he’s going straight back to Azkaban.” 

“An end?” Sirius echoed. “So they…?” 

“Hardly anyone left to arrest,” James said coolly. 

Harry remembered the way the bodies had sounded when they hit the floor. Wet. Dense. He leaned against the edge of the bed, blinking fast. 

“He had to do it,” Harry managed, looking at the blurry shape of his father and trying his best to make his expression as certain as he felt. “They were going to…” 

Harry couldn’t bring himself to say more. His father’s face was coming back into focus, and he looked wide-eyed and pale. Harry didn’t think James would assume any part of the gang members’ plans were _sexual_. But he probably did assume, rightly, they intended for Harry to end up dead. 

“Harry,” James said, roughly but quietly. 

That gentleness was almost more than Harry could take. He rubbed his arms. “I’m fine. Thanks to Sirius,” he added determinedly. “So just… _don’t_. Okay, Dad?” 

James didn’t say anything, but at least he wasn’t speaking to Sirius either as he gestured him over. 

It was the worst kind of helplessness and also completely surreal: watching James matter-of-factly cuff Sirius. Seeing them side by side. Knowing their shared history. Then focusing on Sirius and feeling not disgust nor shame — just _want_. Harry wanted him, still. He supposed he was always going to. What person was ever going to compare? 

There were a hundred reasons Harry didn’t want Sirius going back to prison. It was unjust; it was a waste of all Sirius obviously had to offer the world. It meant Sirius suffering, which was hard for Harry to bear. And selfishly, it meant that he wasn’t going to wake up enveloped in Sirius’ arms, his smell. Maybe it was presumptive of Harry to think that would happen again, anyway. Despite what Sirius had said the night before, Harry couldn’t think of any reason he, Harry, had ever gotten Sirius’ attention in the first place, let alone how he could keep it. 

Sirius got in the passenger seat of Minerva’s car and Harry got in the back. No one spoke. Harry had forgotten to buckle his seatbelt. He was bad about forgetting. Usually one of his parents would glance back automatically to check and remind him. But this time it was Harry himself who noticed, as they began to pull off the winding gravel road and onto the blacktop. He eased the strap into place and the click of the buckle was loud and audible in the silent car. 

* 

Harry spent the next few hours sitting in the cramped station interview room talking to two FBI agents. His father had wanted to stay with him, but Harry hadn’t argued when the FBI agents had reminded James that Harry was an adult and his statements would be harder to refute later if he made them without James being present. 

Harry was relieved. There were things about the previous day the agents needed to know, but it was going to be difficult enough to tell it all, let alone while his father sat next to him. Harry knew he’d probably find out the details eventually but it would probably be a little easier to swallow in writing. Or so Harry hoped. 

Then he came out of the room to find his mother — not his father — waiting in one of the chairs in the hallway. She jumped to her feet, dropping a large paper sack that spilled out sandwiches, each wrapped in its own distinctive printed wax paper from several fast food places. 

“What the hell, mom?” Harry asked, laughing wearily as she hugged him and he surveyed the mess over her shoulder. 

“I didn’t know what you’d be hungry for,” she explained. 

Harry ate half a turkey sub sandwich and a bacon cheeseburger while his mother watched him so closely that he thought he was going to get indigestion. But he could hardly blame her for worrying. 

Then she took him home. There wasn’t a chance to ask about Sirius, though Harry’d wanted to all through the interview. He was afraid that if he brought Sirius up, the questions would change course to an area they’d, fortunately, skipped over so far: what had happened between Harry and Sirius in the leadup to the kidnapping. 

He looked at his mother as she put the car into gear and wondered what she knew. He assumed James had told her everything. But she didn’t bring it up; they just drove in an easy silence. She didn’t take Harry to his apartment; she took him to the home where he’d grown up. Harry, feeling like he was suddenly asleep on his feet, started for the basement. 

She grabbed his arm. “Just. You should sleep in your old room.” She smiled, but only halfway. “You don’t have to go downstairs.” 

Harry smiled back at her. “I’m okay, Mom. I don’t need to stay up here.” He didn’t want to, he found. He felt transformed: from the kid who’d been planning to move out the morning of graduation. The change had begun that night when he’d met Sirius and hadn’t stopped. It was still happening, he thought, if at a slightly slower pace. But he felt it still: a stretching and itching under his skin and in all the corners of his mind, detectable if he paused and paid close attention. 

“Downstairs is good,” he assured her and gave her hand a quick squeeze before he pulled away. 

Later, Harry woke up to the sound of his parents talking. Not shouting, but speaking in terse voices. He couldn’t make out the words. He still felt weary even though he’d slept several hours in the middle of the day. Harry rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but found he couldn’t. When the voices faded away upstairs and he heard the front door open and close, Harry hesitated a moment, then rolled out of bed. 

He went out the walk-out basement doors, then climbed the limestone steps up the landscaped terrace to the ground floor. His mother was sitting on the porch swing with a cup of tea. 

“Hi honey,” she said quietly, patting the seat beside her. Harry came up the wooden steps and sat down. The swing creaked on its chains as he leaned back. 

“So, what did you overhear?” she asked, looking amused but also deeply tired. She sipped her tea and watched him over the rim. Her eyes glowed in the soft light of the streetlamp, which had just come to wavering life. 

“I heard you talking, but I couldn’t understand any of it,” Harry said. “You should have put me in the basement years ago.” 

Lily grinned, but she sobered within a moment. She looked at him speculatively. “Your dad told me that something happened with you and Sirius.” 

A lump formed in Harry’s throat. Was it that obvious, finding them lying there together? There’d only been one bed, after all. But apparently it was, because his mother looked anxious and knowing. Harry didn’t say anything, letting his silence act as a confirmation. 

She looked out over the lawn. “Sirius was always charismatic. I bet he’s still that way?” 

Harry shrugged, and when she arched a brow, he nodded and sighed. “Yeah.” 

“Handsome, too?” 

Harry rolled his eyes. “Mom.” She laughed softly and sipped her tea, and Harry looked at her, curious despite his embarrassment. “So you’re not mad?” 

“At you?” She glanced at him. “No. I’d happily kill Sirius, probably, but I’ll get over it.” 

Harry kicked at the floor, making the swing sway. “What’s going to happen to him?” 

She put her hand on his shoulder. “I don’t know, honey.” 

It was the part of the summer when insects teemed as soon as the sun set. Harry heard the heavy noise of locusts in the trees by the creek, a cricket somewhere under the porch, and all through the yard a scattered group of fireflies began to blink. 

“I can find out, though,” she said matter-of-factly. 

Harry didn’t hide his shock. “Really?” 

“Of course.” She looked at him with an open warmth that made Harry feel warm and deeply lucky—unworthy of her but secure in the knowledge she loved him anyway, the way she’d made him feel so often over the years. 

“Thanks, mom,” he said softly. 

“Don’t mention it,” she said, then laughed. “I mean it. Don’t mention it. I’ll get in trouble.” 

Harry smiled, ducking his head. “Deal.” 

* 

The next day his mother summarized the situation for him quietly, as though James would overhear even though Harry knew for a fact they were alone in the house. They sat at the kitchen table with the overhead light on. There were supposed to be three bulbs in the fixture but two had burned out, leaving the room appropriately dim. 

As it turned out, the FBI _had_ held up their end of the deal. Only: it wasn’t a deal for Sirius’ freedom. It was a deal to free his friend Remus. 

Harry was silent with shock. His mother seemed to be shaken by the knowledge too, and Harry wondered for a vicious moment whether she felt guilty for misjudging Sirius. Just for that instant, he hoped she did. 

Then the thought faded. There was no satisfaction to be had in any part of the situation. Not really. 

“I want to see him,” he said. It wasn’t a new demand. 

She cupped her hand over her mouth, looking at him. Then she dropped her hand and Harry saw her frown and in it, how tired she was. 

“Dad said no.” 

Harry sighed heavily and slumped back in his chair at the kitchen table. He felt frustrated and infuriated, with no outlet. He still felt tired and sick half the time. Only a soft tissue injury the doctors had assured Lily when she’d taken him to the Emergency Room the morning before, when he’d been troubled by a pain level that he hadn’t copped to. It had eliminated his appetite, a dead giveaway in the end. 

“I don’t care.” 

Lily smiled with affection and exasperation. “Well, it’s not exactly the kind of place you can sneak into, honey.” 

Harry wanted to kick something. He settled for digging his thumb into the swollen muscle of his shoulder until his vision went slightly black around the edges. Then he wandered downstairs and laid face down in the guest room bed. 

Harry was sure he’d never fall asleep, but somehow he was sleeping fitfully when his father woke him up. 

For a moment, he felt like he was just remembering one of the days from the months before graduation. Before moving out, before Sirius. When he’d slept through his alarm and his father had came in to gently shake him awake. James smoothed his hair off his forehead and smiled down at him, looking the slightest bit blurry. He handed Harry his glasses. Harry put them on and blinked at him. 

It wasn’t a memory or a dream. James was there. There wasn’t a proper window in the basement and the only light seemed to be coming from the hallway, angling in through the open door. 

“Get dressed,” his father said quietly, and stepped back. 

Harry did, too disoriented to ask any questions until he’d gotten into his jeans and a clean shirt — tricky, his shoulder still painful and unwieldy — and came out into the hall carrying his shoes. James leaned against the wall, frowning to himself with his arms crossed. He looked Harry up and down, nodded to himself, and led him out of the dark house to the driveway, where his patrol car was parked. He opened the passenger door for Harry then got in on the other side. 

Baffled and still holding his shoes, Harry slid into the seat. “Dad, what…?” 

“Sirius is being moved this morning,” James said shortly. “So. I’m taking you to the station, in case you still want to speak to him.” 

Harry stared at his father and James dragged a hand through his hair, his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. Finally, he spared Harry a glance. 

“I didn’t want to tell you this, but it wasn’t me who was keeping you from seeing him. _He_ didn’t want to see _you_.” 

Harry’s eyes narrowed and he felt a chill despite the warmth of the morning. “What?” 

James shrugged, looking at Harry uneasily. “I don’t know why. It’s not like we’ve had a heart to heart.” His look softened. “Maybe he’s trying to do the right thing?” 

“The ‘right thing,’” Harry echoed dully. 

“Well, yes,” James said. “I mean, differences in age and — I don’t know, life stage — aside, he’s about to go back to prison to finish a long sentence. Obviously if he strings you along that’s...not good, Harry. For _you_.” 

Harry tried not to grind his teeth. “I’ll be nineteen in three weeks. This is...this is bullshit, and you know it.” Harry was beginning to wonder how old he’d have to be before people around him stopped thinking they knew him better than he knew himself. 

“I agree,” James said shortly. 

Harry stared. “ _What_?” 

“I agree. It’s up to you to...do this? Or whatever. You’re not a child.” 

Harry didn’t know what to say. So he didn’t say anything, the entire drive across town. The sun was coming up through a film of summer fog. 

A bored-looking attendant showed Harry into the jail. There wasn’t much to it; they lived in a small, quiet town. There were two cells that looked exactly like Harry had imagined. Barred walls, metal benches, toilets in plain view in the corner next to a drinking fountain. Sirius occupied the cell closer to the door, being the only person there. 

He’d been stretched out on a bench, legs crossed at the ankle and staring at the ceiling. When the door opened and Harry came in, he sat bolt upright. 

“Kid,” he said. Even in his guarded tone, the word hit Harry in a strange and distracting way. 

“Sirius.” He almost lingered at the door, but he made himself get closer instead. He walked up and grasped the bars, leaning into them a bit, but couldn’t bring himself to look directly at Sirius. “I know you didn’t want to see me, and if it was for any reason other than ‘my own good,’ I’ll go right now.” 

“Nope, that was pretty much it,” Sirius said faintly. Harry glanced up, hopeful, and found that Sirius was looking Harry up and down with swift glances that made Harry feel oddly aware of his own skin. 

Harry hadn’t realized he was carrying so much tension until that moment. He slumped more heavily against the barrier. “Oh.” 

“Kid,” Sirius said again, lower. Harry shuddered. 

“I heard about your deal.” 

Sirius just watched him, alert but quiet. 

“So you’re going back.” 

“Back inside? Yes. Just for a couple years. If all goes well.” 

_Just_ a couple years. Harry swallowed. “What do you mean, if all goes well?” 

“They’re still making a determination about whether to file additional charges.” 

_Additional charges_ , Harry thought numbly, _for murdering those men._

“They won’t,” he said, with more confidence than he felt. Sirius rubbed his knees and chuckled. 

“You’re fierce, kid. Thanks. I’m optimistic too. And there’s also the expectation I’ll behave myself while I’m behind bars. I don’t have the best record in that department.” 

Harry snorted. That, he could imagine. 

“I’ll come visit you.” 

Sirius’ slight smile vanished. “No.” 

Harry glared but Sirius lifted his hands, cutting him off before he could start. “Hear me out. This isn’t a ‘for your own good’ thing, kid. I don’t want you coming to visit me or calling or — god — writing.” 

Harry flinched and Sirius shot to his feet, his eyes bright, and in a moment he was there, close, his hands clasped over Harry’s on the bars before Harry could back away. 

“It isn’t that I’m not flattered as hell, kid, or, fuck, interested as hell either. But I’m going to need to keep my head down in there. Stay sharp. I can’t — I don’t — I won’t be able to do that if you’re —” 

“So this is it,” Harry cut in savagely. But he couldn’t make himself pull away. In fact, almost without deciding to, he found himself pressed himself closer so that one of his knees knocked against Sirius’, his face uptilted. 

Sirius searched his face with his quicksilver eyes. “For now. When I get out — then, maybe, if you’re not madly in love with some twenty-five-year-old investment banker —“ 

“I…” Harry began to interject, but Sirius shifted closer too: letting go of Harry’s hands and reaching through to grasp his waist. 

“If you’re interested, then, you’d better look me up.” 

Harry grabbed Sirius’ collar and pulled him down. Their teeth clacked and the steel bar by Harry’s right cheek was bruisingly cold, but Sirius’ mouth felt even more perfect than he remembered. 

“I will be,” Harry breathed. There was someone tapping on the other side of the locked door. 

“ _Harry_ ,” called Minerva, voice almost inaudible. “ _Time’s up_.” 

Sirius started to draw back, but Harry yanked him closer. Their foreheads touched. Sirius’ thumbs were pressed into the little indentations inside Harry’s hips. 

“And you,” Harry said, almost panting against the urge to cry, “you be on your best behavior, okay?” 

Sirius chuckled, bleak, and kissed Harry again. This time it was quick, chaste, unlingering. Sirius pushed him gently away and stepped back while Harry’s hands were slack with distracted surprise on his shirt. “I promise,” he said, smiling, his eyes warm on Harry’s face. “For whatever it’s worth.” 

* 

2000 

Ron and Hermione celebrated Harry’s twentieth birthday with him despite the odds. Hermione flew in from her internship, then right back out. Ron delayed his return to school, where he was taking a two-week course before the semester began that Monday. 

It had been a hard, lonely year, but Harry could almost forget it by the time they’d gone down the laundry list of things they needed to do ‘for old times’ sake.’ Almost, for an hour. 

When the shop had reopened six months before, Harry went back to work. Frank and Hagrid were bent over a stack of reports in the office, and they stared at him when he came in. They looked nothing alike; yet their shocked expressions were comically identical. 

Harry ruffled his hair and smiled wryly. “Did you not expect me?” 

In hindsight of course they hadn’t. But Harry found — aside from needing a few moments to study the parking lot in the bright daylight before stepping off the sidewalk and onto the gravel — that the scene of the crime held no significance for him. He’d moved o 

On the Monday after his birthday, he heard a motorcycle engine and was surprised to find that his heart didn’t jump into his throat at the sound. _Progress_ , he thought to himself with grim amusement as he peered back into the guts of the engine he was trying to diagnose. 

Hagrid was eating a sandwich in the office and surreptitiously watching _Days of Our Lives_ on the ancient black and white television (a habit Harry pretended to be unaware of) on his break. No one else was working. Harry paused and looked up when the shop door was pushed open from the outside. 

Then he dropped the wrench he was holding, because the man in black leather — whose gaze was skimming the sedan on lifts, then the old Grand Cherokee Harry was crouched over, and then Harry himself — was Sirius. 

“You…” Harry began, feeling thick-tongued and stupid. He straightened up and almost tripped over his suddenly leaden feet. “What…?” 

Sirius was moving, circling the truck. One hand skimming along its side panel while his eyes fixed on Harry. His whole face was intent, questioning. 

“I was driving by, and thought...well, I didn’t think you’d be here, honestly, kid, what the fuck...but then I thought — what if you were, and…?” 

Harry stayed still, unable to move, and barely unlocked his tongue. “You’re not in jail,” was what he managed. 

Sirius grinned slowly, pausing just out of arm’s reach. He was close enough, though, that Harry caught a whiff of a subtle cologne. Realized Sirius was clean-shaven and his hair freshly, loosely braided. His t-shirt was stiff under his jacket, like it was brand new. And the jacket was unfamiliar, buttery-soft, not yet worn to Sirius’ shape and without a single patch. 

Harry stepped around the front of the car, halfway closing the gap between them. But he was still so clumsy that he didn’t trust himself to do much more than that. 

“Hi, kid,” Sirius said quietly, an inevitable smile on one side of his face. 

Harry couldn’t stop himself. He reached up, carefully, and closed his hand over Sirius’ left forearm, feeling the shape of him under the leather. Sirius took a deep breath through his nose. 

“How?” Harry demanded. “How are you here?” Was he really free? Harry didn’t know what else this — Sirius being here, free, in broad daylight — could mean, but it also felt reckless to assume. He wildly imagined a prison break, or another risky undercover mission. 

“I’m out,” Sirius said softly. He was looking at Harry’s hand on his arm. Harry thought he should let go, but couldn’t quite bring himself to. So he looked at his hand too. There was a smudge of oil on the back. Sirius’ leather sleeve dimpled under the firm press of his thumb. 

“I just wanted to — ” Sirius began, frowning. He glanced up at Harry and their gazes caught. He didn’t look away again. “See you. But you don’t... you know. I don’t expect anything.” 

Harry’s thoughts, slow and shock-tangled, were beginning to straighten out. The jacket smelled factory-new. Sirius’ hair was carefully braided. He was smiling, but only halfway, and his face was angled so that he could look at Harry askance, out of the corners of his eyes. 

It all came together with an almost-audible click in Harry’s head. Sirius had come here to find Harry. He’d taken extra care getting dressed, dabbed on cologne. He’d checked his reflection, maybe in front of some motel mirror. Maybe in the side mirror on his bike. Now here he was, holding himself back, the closest Harry would bet Sirius Black had ever gotten to feeling shy. 

Harry felt a wave of painful affection, giddy pride, and a sudden impulse he didn’t question. He let go of Sirius’ arm so he could slide his hands, then his arms, around Sirius’ waist, then pulled, so Sirius stumbled against him, hip to hip, and Harry felt the hard lines of his back through his jacket: that heat he remembered blooming between them in an instant just like before. 

Sirius grinned. Harry only saw it for a moment — the beautiful curve of his lips, the straight white teeth — before Sirius cupped the back of his neck, his other hand on Harry’s hip. He leaned in and pressed his face against the side of Harry’s, talking through the soft kisses he placed on Harry’s cheek. 

“Kid,” he said, a laugh still just under the surface. He was — there was only one word for it — _nuzzling_ Harry’s neck, his nose warm. “God. I thought I’d just imagined you. But here you are. Better than I remembered.” 

Harry couldn’t say the same. Sirius was precisely the version Harry remembered, the one who’d sauntered in and out of his lovesick dreams for a year. But he didn’t trust himself to explain that in a way that would come out right, so he just held Sirius tighter, his face pressed into the vee of his collar where he smelled just skin. Just Sirius. 

“Yeah,” he lied. “Even better.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end! Sort of! I have an epilogue in mind that is basically the shameless smut I didn't write in this determinedly fluffy work. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it! I have had so much fun writing it and interacting with y'all in the comments.


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